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Updated: June 4, 2025
Carcopino, who, with a copy of Vergil in hand, has carefully surveyed the Latin coast from the Tiber mouth, past the site of Lavinium down to Ardea, is convinced that the poet traced every manoeuvre and every sally on the actual ground which he chose for his theatre of action in the last six books.
The rest of them indeed had less weight with him, but after Spurius Lucretius, superior to all the others in age and high character, who was besides his own father-in-law, began to try various methods, alternately entreating and advising, in order to induce him to allow himself to be prevailed on by the general feeling of the state, the consul, apprehensive that hereafter the same lot might befall him, when his term of office had expired, as well as loss of property and other additional disgrace, resigned his consulship, and removing all his effects to Lavinium, withdrew from the city.
However, after five years, Tatius was murdered at a place called Lavinium, in the middle of a sacrifice, and Romulus reigned alone till in the middle of a great assembly of his soldiers outside the city, a storm of thunder and lightning came on, and every one hurried home, but the king was nowhere to be found; for, as some say, his father Mars had come down in the tempest and carried him away to reign with the gods, while others declared that he was murdered by persons, each of whom carried home a fragment of his body that it might never be found.
On the south we find at a distance of fourteen miles the powerful communities of Tusculum and Alba; and the Roman territory appears not to have extended in this direction beyond the -Fossa Cluilia-, five miles from Rome. In like manner, towards the south-west, the boundary betwixt Rome and Lavinium was at the sixth milestone.
Preparations were made on both sides with the utmost vigour for a war very like a civil one, in a manner between parents and children, both being of Trojan stock: for from Troy came Lavinium, from Lavinium, Alba, and the Romans were descended from the stock of the Alban kings.
And to this purpose many agreed both of the men of Alba and of the Latins, and also of the shepherds that had followed them from the first, holding it for certain all of them that Alba and Lavinium would be of small account in comparison of this new city which they should build together.
And, after thirty years, his son Ascanius went forth from Lavinium with much people, and built him a new city, which he called Alba. In this city reigned kings of the house and lineage of Æneas for twelve generations. Of these kings the eleventh in descent was one Procas, who, having two sons, Numitor and Amulius, left his kingdom, according to the custom, to Numitor, the elder.
Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from Ilion, is as certainly an addition of his own, as the ingenious parallel between the Roman October horse and the Trojan horse, and the exact inventory taken of the sacred objects of Lavinium there were, our worthy author affirms, heralds' staves of iron and copper, and an earthen vase of Trojan manufacture!
He accordingly explored the country around for a favorable site, and at length decided upon a spot nearly north of Lavinium, and not many miles distant from it. The place which he marked out for the walls of the city was at the foot of a mountain, on a tract of somewhat elevated ground, which formed one of the lower declivities of it.
He next retook Lavinium: he then took in succession Corbio, Vitellia, Trebia, Lavici, and Pedum: Lastly he marches from Pedum to the city, and having pitched his camp at the Cluilian trenches five miles from the city, he from thence ravages the Roman territory, guards being sent among the devastators to preserve the lands of the patricians intact; whether as being incensed chiefly against the plebeians, or in order that dissension might arise between the senators and the people.
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