In most of the legends, as they come down to us from civilised and lettered antiquity, the true nature of this sanguinary foundation-rite is overlaid and disguised by later rationalising guesses and I may mention that Dr. Robertson Smith in particular habitually treats the rationalising guesses as primitive, and the real old tradition of the slaughtered virgin as a myth of explanation of “the later Euhemeristic Syrians.” But after the examples we have already seen of foundation-gods, I think I can hardly be doubted that this is to reverse the true order; that a girl was really sacrificed for a tutelary deity when a town was founded, and that the substitution of an animal victim at the annual renewal was a later refinement. Mr. Speth quotes a case in point of a popular tradition that a young girl had been built into the castle of Nieder-Manderschied; and when the wall was opened in 1844, the Euhemeristic workmen found a cavity enclosing a human skeleton. I would suggest, again, that in the original legend of the foundation of Rome, Romulus was represented as having built-in {257}his brother Remus as a Fortune, or god, of the city, and that to this identification of Remus with the city we ought to trace such phrases as _turba Remi_ for the Roman people. The word _forum_ in its primitive signification means the empty space left before a tomb--the _llan_ or _temenos_. Hence I would suggest that the Roman Forum and other Latin _fora_ were really the tomb-enclosures of the original foundation-victims. * So, too, the English village green and “play-field” are probably the space dedicated to the tribal or village god--a slain man-god; and they are usually connected with the sacred stone and sacred tree. I trust this point will become clearer as we proceed, and develop the whole theory of the foundation god or goddess, the allied sacred stone and the tree or trunk memorial. * In the case of Rome, the Forum would represent the grave of the later foundation-god of the compound Latin and Sabine city.