But of that hereafter.
Their minds being fully bent upon building, there arose presently a
difference about the place where. Romulus chose what was called Roma
Quadrata, or the Square Rome, and would have the city there. Remus laid
out a piece of ground on the Aventine Mount, well fortified by nature,
which was from him called Remonium, but now Rignarium. Concluding at
last to decide the contest by a divination from a flight of birds, and
placing themselves apart at some distance, Remus, they say, saw six
vultures, and Romulus double the number; others say Remus did truly see
his number, and that Romulus feigned his, but, when Remus came to him,
that then he did, indeed, see twelve. Hence it is that the Romans, in
their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though
Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a
vulture appeared to him upon any action. For it is a creature the least
hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it
preys only upon carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and
as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its
own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own
fellow-creatures; yet, as Aeschylus says,--
What bird is clean that preys on fellow bird ?
Besides all other birds are, so to say, never out of our eyes; they let
themselves be seen of us continually; but a vulture is a very rare
sight, and you can seldom meet with a man that has seen their young;
their rarity and infrequency has raised a strange opinion in some, that
they come to us from some other world; as soothsayers ascribe a divine
origination to all things not produced either of nature
or of themselves.
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