_ XI. Romulus buried. Remus, together with his
foster-fathers, in the Remonia,! and then set himself
to building his city, after summoning from Tuscany
men who prescribed all the details in accordance
with certain sacred ordinances and writings, and
taught them to him as in a religious rite. A circular
trench was dug around what is now the Comitium,?
and in this were. deposited first-fruits. of all things
the use of which was sanctioned by custom as good
and by nature as necessary ; and finally, every man
brought a small portion of the soil of his native land,
and these were cast in among the first-fruits and
mingled with them. They call this trench, as they
do the heavens, by the name of “mundus.” Then,
taking this as a centre, they marked out the city in
a circle round it. And the founder, having shod a
plough with a brazen ploughshare, and having yoked
to it a bull and a cow, himself drove a deep furrow
round the boundary lines, while those who followed
after him had to turn the clods, which the plough
threw up, inwards towards the city, and suffer no
clod to lie turned outwards. With this line they
mark out the course of the wall, and it is called,
by contraction, “ pomerium,” that is “ post murum,”’
behind or next the wall. And where they purposed to
put in a gate, there they took the share out of
the ground, lifted.the plough over, and left a vacant
1 See chapter ix.4.....
? A space adjoining the forum where the people met in


assembly. ‘The mundus, or augural centre of the city, was
really on the Palatine.
