Ab urbe condita

Though in all other respects an excellent man, his ambition, which impelled him to seek the crown, followed him on to the throne; with the design of strengthening himself quite as much as of increasing the State, he made a hundred new senators. These were afterwards called “the Lesser Houses” and formed a body of uncompromising supporters of the king, through whose kindness they had entered the senate. [*](Institution of the “ Ludi Romani.” )- The first war he engaged in was with the Latins.

He took the town of Apiolae by storm; and carried off a greater amount of plunder than could have been expected from the slight interest shown in the war. After this had been brought in wagons to Rome, he celebrated the Games with greater splendour and on a larger scale than his predecessors.

Then for the first time a space was marked for what is now the “ Circus Maximus.” Spots were allotted to the patricians and knights where they could each build for themselves stands-called “ fori ” —from which to view the Games.

These stands were raised on wooden props, branching out at the top, twelve feet high. The contests were horse-racing and boxing, the horses and boxers mostly brought from Etruria. They were at first celebrated on occasions of especial solemnity; subsequently they became an annual fixture, and were called indifferently the “Roman” or the “Great Games.”

This king also divided the ground round the Forum into building sites; arcades and shops were put up.

He[*](War with the Sabines-The Augur Attus Navius.) was also making preparations for surrounding the City with a stone wall when his designs were interrupted by a war with the Sabines. So sudden was the outbreak that the enemy were crossing the Anio before a Roman army could meet and stop them.

There was great alarm in Rome. The first battle was indecisive, and there was great slaughter on both sides. The enemies' return to their camp allowed time for the Romans to make preparations for a fresh campaign. Tarquin thought his army was weakest in cavalry and decided to double the centuries, which Romulus had formed, of the Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres, and to distinguish them by his own name.

Now as Romulus had acted under the sanction of the auspices, Attus Navius, a celebrated augur at that time, insisted that no change could be made, nothing new introduced, unless the birds gave a favourable omen.