Young Folks History of Rome | Page 3

each wood its
faun; also there were gods to whom the boundary stones of estates were
dedicated. There was a goddess of fruits called Pomona, and a god of
fruits named Vertumnus. In their names the fields and the crops were
solemnly blest, and all were sacred to Saturn. He, according to the old
legends, had first taught husbandry, and when he reigned in Italy there
was a golden age, when every one had his own field, lived by his own
handiwork, and kept no slaves. There was a feast in honor of this time
every year called the Saturnalia, when for a few days the slaves were
all allowed to act as if they were free, and have all kinds of wild sports
and merriment. Afterwards, when Greek learning came in, Saturn was
mixed up with the Greek Kronos, or Time, who devours his offspring,
and the reaping-hook his figures used to carry for harvest became
Time's scythe. The sky-god, Zeus or Deus Pater (or father), was
shortened into Jupiter; Juno was his wife, and Mars was god of war,
and in Greek times was supposed to be the same as Ares; Pallas Athene
was joined with the Latin Minerva; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth,
was called Vesta; and, in truth, we talk of the Greek gods by their Latin
names. The old Greek tales were not known to the Latins in their first
times, but only afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have
thought of their gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less
capricious and fanciful than the legends about the weather had made
them seem to the Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher,
graver, fiercer, more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not
so clever, thoughtful, or poetical, but with more of what we should now
call sterling stuff in them.
At least so it was with that great nation which spoke their language, and
seems to have been an offshoot from them. Rome, the name of which is

said to mean the famous, is thought to have been at first a cluster of
little villages, with forts to protect them on the hills, and temples in the
forts. Jupiter had a temple on the Capitoline Hill, with cells for his
worship, and that of Juno and Minerva; and the two-faced Janus, the
god of gates, had his upon the Janicular Hill. Besides these, there were
the Palatine, the Esquiline, the Aventine, the Cælian, and the Quirinal.
The people of these villages called themselves Quirites, or spearmen,
when they formed themselves into an army and made war on their
neighbors, the Sabines and Latins, and by-and-by built a wall enclosing
all the seven hills, and with a strip of ground within, free from houses,
where sacrifices were offered and omens sought for.
The history of these people was not written till long after they had
grown to be a mighty and terrible power, and had also picked up many
Greek notions. Then they seem to have made their history backwards,
and worked up their old stories and songs to explain the names and
customs they found among them, and the tales they told were formed
into a great history by one Titus Livius. It is needful to know these
stories which every one used to believe to be really history; so we will
tell them first, beginning, however, with a story told by the poet Virgil.
CHAPTER II.
THE WANDERINGS OF ÆNEAS.
You remember in the Greek history the burning of Troy, and how
Priam and all his family were cut off. Among the Trojans there was a
prince called Æneas, whose father was Anchises, a cousin of Priam,
and his mother was said to be the goddess Venus. When he saw that the
city was lost, he rushed back to his house, and took his old father
Anchises on his back, giving him his Penates, or little images of
household gods, to take care of, and led by the hand his little son Iulus,
or Ascanius, while his wife Creusa followed close behind, and all the
Trojans who could get their arms together joined him, so that they
escaped in a body to Mount Ida; but just as they were outside the city
he missed poor Creusa, and though he rushed back and searched for her
everywhere, he never could find her. For the sake of his care for his

gods, and for his old father, he is always known as the pious Æneas.
In the forests of Mount Ida he built ships enough to set forth with all
his followers in quest of the new home which his mother, the goddess
Venus, gave him hopes of. He had adventures rather like those of
Ulysses as he sailed about the Mediterranean.