that Numa consecrated this grove, with its grotto and spring of living water, to the Muses, who were accustomed there to meet his wife Egeria. Whether this Egeria is to be regarded as a mortal woman, perhaps the lawful wife of the king, or, what is considerably less likely, a divine being, cannot be decided from these traditions. But they surely have a value in that they indicate the willingness of the earliest Romans to attribute excellence in statesmanship on the part of their best men to the inspiration of members of the fair and gentle, sex. After the death of Numa, the Romans elected as their king Tullus Hostilius, and thus a turbulent warrior succeeded the peace-loving lawgiver. In this reign, instead of the poetic anachronism which portrays an abnormally advanced civilization, we are brought back again to earth and to history and to a more accurate description of the progress of the people. Much is revealed in the story by which Livy, in his inimitable manner, accounts for the Sororium Tigillium, or the Sister's Post, a monument which he says was existent in his own day. Here we not only encounter the terrible right of the father of a family over the lives of his children, but we also see that the tender instincts of a woman's love were accounted as nothing in comparison with loyalty to the family and her duty of hatred to the enemies of the State. The heroic Horatius, single-handed after the death of his brothers, had slain the three champions of the Alban army, and thus provided the first taste of the delight of subjugation to the city which was destined to become the mistress of the world. In the triumphal return to Rome, Horatius marched foremost of all the army, carrying before him the spoils of the three Alban brothers. As they neared the Porto Capena, the Roman women came forth to welcome the victors home. Among the rest came Horatia, the sister of the youthful conqueror. As she ran to embrace him, she noticed upon his shoulder a familiar robe; in fact, it was a soldier's tunic which she had wrought with her own hands for one of the vanquished Curiatii, to whom she had been betrothed. The truth flashed upon the damsel's mind in an instant. Her lover was dead, and that by the hand of her brother. With tears and lamentations, she began to call upon the name of her betrothed. Possibly with her cries of grief she joined bitter upbraidings of her brother, who had saved himself and Rome at the cost of her bereavement. His sister's lamentations, in the midst of his own triumph and the great public rejoicing, so greatly angered the excited youth that he drew his sword and stabbed her to the heart. As he did this, he cried: "Go with thy unseasonable love; go and rejoin thy betrothed, thou who forgettest thy dead brothers, and him who remains, and thy country! So perish every woman who shall dare to lament the death of an enemy!" This atrocious murder raised, of course, a profound sensation among the people. They