II. The Roman history says, that the vestal virgin Rhea Silva, having gone into a neighbouring wood to sacrifice, the god Mars took that opportunity of coming upon her by surprize, and ravishing her: the result of which rape was, the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus; who, soon after they were born, were left deserted on the banks of the Tiber, where a she wolf suckled and preserved them; but being afterwards found by the shepherd Faustulas; he took them up and delivered them to his wife Laurentia, to be nursed and reared. The same story, without the least variation in a single particular, is related by Zopirus Byzantinus, of the Grecian Philonomia, the daughter of Nictimus, who having gone into a wood, and been surprized and ravished there by the god Mars, was afterwards, in consequence of the rape, delivered of two sons, who were exposed on the banks of the river Erimanthus, and carried by the current into a plain, where they received their first nourishment from a wolf; and being taken up and preserved by the shepherd Telephus, came afterwards to be kings of Arcadia. III. We are told that the senators, tired of the dominion of Romulus, killed him in the senate-house; and, in order to conceal his death, carried out each a piece of the defunct king, hid under their garments; in consequence of this contrivance, the body not appearing, they were able to impose upon the people, and persuade them that he had ascended to Heaven. The same story, tittle for tittle, is related by Theophilus of Pisistratus, the ancient king of Orchomena, in his Peloponnesian history. He says, the senators, fired with indignation against him, for favouring the populace more than the nobility, demolished and cut him into pieces in the senate-house, from whence each of them carried out a small portion of his body hid under their cloaths, which they deposited in their houses, and by that means concealed the assassination from the public; and, just afterwards Tlesymachus, one of the faction, pretended that he had seen Pisistratus upon the top of Mount Piseus in the shape of a deity.