Such was ancient Rome, as it appears to the historic eye endeavoring to penetrate the mists of the past, where at first all seems vague and wavering. The inquirer to whom we owe the power to conceive the condition of ancient Rome, so far as that depended on political institutions, was the celebrated German historian Niebuhr. Not so, however, did the Romans conceive their own early history. In all ancient communities, it was a habit of the popular imagination, nay, it was part of the popular religion, to trace the fortunes of the community to some divine or semi-divine founder; whose exploits, as well as those of his heroic successors, formed the subject of numerous sacred legends and ballads. Now, it was part of the Roman faith that their city had been founded at a point of time corresponding with B. C. 754, by twin brothers of miraculous birth, called Romulus and Remus, whose father was the war god Mars, and their mother a vestal virgin of the line of the Alban kings, the progeny of the great Æneas. Romulus, according to this legend, surviving his brother Remus, became the king of the village of shepherds which he had founded on the Palatine; and it was in his reign that those events took place which terminated in the establishment of the triple community of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. Setting out with Romulus, the Romans traced the history of their state through a series of legends relating to six kings his successors, whose characters, and the lengths of their reigns, are all duly determined. Of this traditionary succession of seven kings, extending over a period of 245 years (B. C. 754-509), history can recognize with certainty the existence of only the two or three latest. It is possible, however, to elicit out of the legends a glimmering of the actual history of the Roman state during these imaginary reigns.