[Sidenote: The Alban kings seem to have been expected to make thunder and rain for the good of their subjects.] But in ceding the pontificate to their rivals, it would seem that the reigning dynasty of the Silvii or Woods by no means renounced their own claim to personate the god of the oak and the thunder; for the Roman annals record that one of them, Romulus, Remulus, or Amulius Silvius by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter. To support his pretensions and overawe his subjects, he constructed machines whereby he mimicked the clap of thunder and the flash of lightning. Diodorus relates that in the season of fruitage, when thunder is loud and frequent, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of heaven’s artillery by clashing their swords against their shields. But he paid the penalty of his impiety, for he perished, he and his house, struck by a thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace. But still, says an ancient historian, when the water is low and the surface unruffled by a breeze, you may see the ruins of the palace at the bottom of the clear lake.[578] Taken along with the similar story of Salmoneus, king of Elis,[579] this legend points to a real custom observed by the early kings of Greece and Italy, who like their fellows in Africa down to modern times may have been expected to produce rain and thunder for the good of the crops.[580] The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in the art of drawing down lightning from the sky.[581] Mock thunder, we know, has been made by various peoples as a rain-charm in modern times;[582] why should it not have been made by kings in antiquity?