The story is aptly figured in the person of the god Mars, who was the reputed father of Romulus and Remus. The Roman god was at first an agricultural divinity--the "spears of Mars" were the rods with which the shepherd owner marked his boundaries. When, under the influence of Greece, Mars became the god of battles, the boundary marker of the fields became his war weapons. But if the Roman knew how to beat his ploughshare into a sword, he also knew how to return from the sword to the plough. The one was never far from the other--they put him in possession of those two ways of inheriting the earth, multiplying and subduing, producing and combating. Thus the pastoral legend never died out from the land of Saturn, and in the proudest flush of victory, when the relics of the _hastae martis_ were shown to the triumphant followers of Mars, there was present to the soul of the Roman the image of the father of Romulus covering the land with gigantic strides to strike these same _hastae_ into the soil as a sign of possession, the emblem of primitive law. Two hills in Central Italy and a swamp between them provided the theatre of perhaps the greatest millennium in human history. On the one hill were the Latins--or let us call them the Roman people--the site of _Roma Quadrata_ the foster-land of Romulus, the birthplace of Augustus, the hill which has given its name to the imperial palaces of the earth. On the other were the Quirites and the site of the Sabine arx, that _Capitolium_ so-called, says Montfaucon, "because it was the head of the world, from which the consuls and senators governed the universe." Whenever the marshy ground between them was passable, the Latins and Sabines descended the steep declivities of their hills and transformed it into a battlefield. But even in these early days they felt the need of a _comitium_ where the rival chiefs could meet to decide upon terms; and in no long space this battle-ground became the nucleus and pledge of the political greatness of Rome. For the Forum symbolises all human civilisation. It is the symbol of the common meeting ground--the common sentiments and needs--of human beings, where rancours are laid aside for the business of life--its common but its noblest business, civic, "civilised," pursuits. It is the symbol of human greatness also, for the Roman never suffered the common necessities to force upon him an ignoble peace. The battle-ground became the centre of civic life, but only on condition that the interests for which men should combat were never sacrificed to the interests for which men should co-operate. Through the symbolic _trait d'union_ of the Forum, two fortresses of barbarians became the nucleus of the city which ruled the world, and their people the imperial people of history. [Illustration: THE FORUM FROM THE ARCH OF SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS