Numitor and Amulius were both of them candidates for the throne. Numitor is a prænomen; but the name of Amulius says nothing in proof of his having belonged to the _gens Silvia_; I question therefore if the old tradition took them for brothers. Amulius, so it is said, had got possession of the throne, and had made Rea Silvia the daughter of Numitor, a vestal, in order that the Silvian race might become extinct. This shows a want of knowledge of public law, as a daughter surely could not convey gentilician rights. The name Rea Silvia is old, yet Rea is only a cognomen; _rea femina_ is in Boccaccio, and still to this day in Tuscany, a woman who has lost her honour. A priestess Rea in Virgil is ravished by Hercules. Whilst Rea in a grove was drawing water for a sacrifice, an eclipse of the sun took place, and she fled from a wolf into a cavern where Mars overpowered her. At her delivery, the sun is again eclipsed, and the image of Vesta covers its eyes. Livy here has left out the wonderful part. The tyrant threw Rea with her children into the Anio: she lost her life in the river; but the river god took her soul, changed her into an immortal goddess, and made her his wife. This is now modified by the tale of her imprisonment, which is prosaic enough to be of later invention. The Anio bore the cradle, just as if it were a boat, into the Tiber, on which it was drifted to the foot of the Palatine, the waters being high in consequence of a flood; and there it was overturned at the root of a fig-tree. The she-wolf takes the children forth, and suckles[52] them: Mars sends a woodpecker, which brings them food, and the bird _parra_,[53] who keeps them free from vermin. These details are scattered: the narrators have as much as possible stripped them of the marvellous. Faustulus, the legend goes on to say, found the boys nursed with the milk of the strong brute; he brought them up with his twelve sons, and they became the stoutest of them all. As chiefs of the herdsmen of the Palatine, they had a quarrel with those of Numitor on the Aventine;--the Palatine and the Aventine are always hostile;--Remus is led away a prisoner to Alba; Romulus rescues him; the descent from Numitor is discovered, and the latter restored to the government. They receive permission to settle at the foot of the Palatine hill, the place of their rescue.