It might have been expected that Servius, when elevated above his own humble stock, might have held his head so high and become so stiff-necked as to prevent him from noticing the rank from which he had sprung; but, on the contrary, he exalted himself by endeavouring to raise others. His reign was not a continued round of fights, for he preferred the trowel to the sword, and, instead of cutting his name with the latter weapon, he wisely chose to build up his reputation with the former instrument. His first care was to complete the city, to which he added three hills, feeling, perhaps, that his fame would become as ancient as the hills themselves; and with a happy perception that if "walls have ears" they are just as likely to have tongues, he surrounded Rome with a wall, which might speak to future ages of his spirit and enterprise. He was a friend to insolvent debtors, to whom he gave the benefit of an act of unexampled liberality. Desiring them to make out schedules of their liabilities, he paid off the creditors in a double sense, for they were extremely reluctant to receive the cash, the payment of which cashiered their claim on the person and possessions of their debtors. He abolished imprisonment for debt, giving power to creditors over the goods and not the persons--or, as an ingenious scholar has phrased it, the bona and not the bones--of their debtors. [Illustration: Debtor and Creditor.--Seizure of Goods for a Debt.] Servius found that while he was raising up buildings he was knocking down a great deal of money; but being nevertheless anxious to erect a temple to Diana on the Aventine Hill he persuaded the Latins, who had made the place a sort of _quartier Latin_, to subscribe to it. The Latins, the Romans, and the Sabines, were every year to celebrate a sort of union sacrifice on this spot, where the cutting up and cooking of oxen formed what may be termed a joint festival. It happened that a Sabine agriculturist had reared a prize heifer, which caused quite an effervescence among his neighbours, and taking the bull quietly by the horns, he asked the augur what it would be meet for him to do with it. The soothsayer looked at the bull, who turned his brilliant bull's eye upon the astonished sage, with a sort of supercilious stare that almost amounted to a glaring oversight. The augur, not liking the look of the animal, and anxious, no doubt, to put an end to the interview, declared that whoever sacrificed the beast to Diana, off-hand, would benefit his race, and cause his nation to rule over the other confederates. The animal was led away with a shambling gait to the sacred shambles, where the Roman priest was waiting to set his hand to any Bull that might be presented to him. Seeing the Sabine preparing to act as slaughterman, the pontiff became tiffy, and suggested, that if the other was going to do the job, he might as well do it with clean hands, upon which the Sabine rushed to the river to take a finger bath.