Numitor was the eldest son of Procas, the last king of Alba Longa, and he had a younger brother called Amulius. When Procas died, Amulius seized by force on the kingdom, and left to Numitor only his share of his father’s private inheritance. After this he caused Numitor’s only son to be slain, and made his daughter Silvia become one of the virgins who watched the ever-burning fire of the goddess Vesta. But the god Mamers, who is called also Mars, beheld the virgin and loved her, and it was found that she was going to become the mother of children. Then Amulius ordered that the children, when born, should be thrown into the river. It happened that the river at that time had flooded the country; when, therefore, the two children in their basket were thrown into the river, the waters carried them as far as the foot of the Palatine Hill, and there the basket was upset, near the roots of a wild fig tree, and the children thrown out upon the land. At this moment there came a she-wolf down to the water to drink, and when she saw the children, she carried them to her cave hard by, and gave them to suck; and whilst they were there, a woodpecker came backwards and forwards to the cave, and brought them food. At last one Faustulus, the king’s herdsman, saw the wolf suckling the children; and when he went up, the wolf left them and fled; so he took them home to his wife Larentia, and they were bred up along with their own sons on the Palatine Hill; and they were called Romulus and Remus. When Romulus and Remus grew up, the herdsmen of the Palatine Hill chanced to have a quarrel with the herdsmen of Numitor, who stalled their cattle on the hill Aventinus. Numitor’s herdsmen laid an ambush, and Remus fell into it, and was taken and carried off to Alba. But when the young man was brought before Numitor, he was struck with his noble air and bearing, and asked him who he was. And when Remus told him of his birth, and how he had been saved from death, together with his brother, Numitor marvelled, and thought whether this might not be his own daughter’s child. In the meanwhile, Faustulus and Romulus hastened to Alba to deliver Remus; and by the help of the young men of the Palatine Hill, who had been used to follow him and his brother, Romulus took the city, and Amulius was killed; and Numitor was made king, and owned Romulus and Remus to be born of his own blood. [Sidenote: [_ca._ 753-716 B.C.]]