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It has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of which I am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting down from the building of Rome, A.U.C., or "anno urbis conditæ," and back from the birth of Christ, which we English mark by the letters B.C., before Christ.
Looking back from our standing-point of to-day, we know how great Rome was infinitely greater, as far as power is concerned, than anything else which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et orbis" was not a false boast.
There is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences of the lower classes. It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of all these poor people and all these vagabonds and all these miserable people whence sprang the apostles and the martyrs, when he uttered this mysterious saying: "Fex urbis, lex orbis," the dregs of the city, the law of the earth.
Thus, the of in an English phrase like "the law of the land" is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational indicator as the "genitive" suffix -is in the Latin lex urbis "the law of the city."
Nevertheless, he went back to Rome, ad annum urbis conditae, and found the fathers of the Federalists in the primeval aristocrats of that renowned city! He traced the flow of Federal blood down through successive ages and centuries, till he brought it into the veins of the American Tories, of whom, by the way, there were twenty in the Carolinas for one in Massachusetts.
They had established the mythical connection of Rome with Troy and with the great cycle of Greek legend, and had originated the idea of making Rome itself that Fortuna Urbis which later stood in the form of a golden statue in the imperial bedchamber the central interest, one might almost say the central figure, of the story.
Deinde a paucis initio facto, Deum, Deo natum, regem parentemque urbis Romanae, salvere universi Romulum jubent; pacem precibus exposcunt, uti volens propitius suam semper sospitet progeniem. Fuisse credo tum quoque aliquos, qui discerptum regem Patrum manibus taciti arguerent; manavit enim haec quoque, et perobscura, fama. Illam alteram admiratio viri, et pavor praesens nobilitavit.
The length of the operation, and the leisure of the country, allowed some time to review my manuscript. Several rare and useful books, the Assises de Jerusalem, Ramusius de Bello Constantinopolitano, the Greek Acts of the Synod of Florence, the Statuta Urbis Romae, &c. were procured, and introduced in their proper places the supplements which they afforded.
The date of the building of Rome was supposed to be A.D. 753; and the Romans counted their years from it, as the Greeks did from the Olympiads, marking the date A.U.C., anno urbis conditæ, the year of the city being built. The youths who joined Romulus could not marry, as no one of the neighboring nations would give his daughter to one of these robbers, as they were esteemed.
These works have been extremely valuable in the course of this inquiry; they are more especially valuable just now in enabling me to trace home to him the authorship of the first six books of the Annals; these works were 15 in number, namely 1. Historia Disceptativa de Avaritia; 2. Two books of Historiae Convivales; 3. An essay De Nobilitate; 4. Ruinarum Urbis Romae Descriptio; 5.
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