Now, it was the custom in those days to reckon by Olympiads, which were periods of four years, the series commencing with a great victory at a foot-race in Greece, won by a man named Coroebus, from which event originated the Olympian games, which were afterward celebrated every four years, and which in subsequent ages became so renowned. The time when Coroebus ran his race, and thus furnished an era for all the subsequent chronologists and historians of his country, is generally regarded as about the year 776 before Christ; and the result of the calculations of Varro's astrologer, and of the astronomers who perfected it, was, that to lead such a life as Romulus led, a man must have been born at a time corresponding with the first year of the second Olympiad; that is, taking off from 776, four years, for the first Olympiad, the first year of the second Olympiad would be 772; this would make the time of his birth 772 before Christ; and then deducting eighteen years more, for the age of Romulus when he began to build his wall, we have 754 before Christ as the era of the foundation of Rome. This method of determining a point in chronology seems so absurd, according to the ideas of the present day, that we can hardly resist the conclusion, that Varro, in making his investigation, was really guided by other and more satisfactory modes of determining the point, and that the horoscope was not what he actually relied upon. However this may be, the era which he fixed upon has been very generally received, though many others have been proposed by the different learned men who have successively investigated the question. According to the accounts given by the early writers, the constructions which Romulus and his companions made were of a very rude and simple character; such as might have been expected from a company of boys: for boys we ought perhaps to consider them all, since it is not to be presumed that the troop, in respect to age and experience, would be much in advance of the leaders. The wall which they built about the city was probably only a substantial stone fence, and their houses were huts and hovels. Even the palace, for there was a building erected for Romulus himself which was called the palace, was made, it is said, of _rushes_. Perhaps the meaning is that it was thatched with rushes,--or possibly the expression refers to a mode of building sometimes adopted in the earlier stages of civilization, in which straw, or rushes, or some similar material is mixed with mud or clay to help bind the mass together, the whole being afterward dried in the sun. Walls thus made have been found to possess much more strength and durability than would be supposed possible for such a material to attain.