IX. In the which he saw and judged as Lycurgus at Sparta had done, a little while before him: that states were better governed by individual command and royal power, if the authority of some of the better class were added to the energy of that kind of government. Thus sustained, and as it were propped up by the senatorial authority, he carried on many wars very successfully with his neighbours; and appropriating to himself no part of the spoil, he never ceased to enrich the citizens. At that time Romulus paid in most things attention to auspices, a custom we still retain, and greatly advantageous to the republic. For he built the city under the observance of auspices at the very beginning of the republic; and in the establishment of all public affairs, he chose an augur from each of the tribes to assist him in the auspices. He also had the common people assigned as clients to the principal men, the utility of which measure I will afterwards consider. Fines were paid in sheep and cattle: for then all property consisted in flocks, and in possessions of lands, whence the terms pecuniary[12] and landholders[13] were derived. He did not attempt to govern by severity or the infliction of punishments. X. When Romulus had reigned thirty-seven years, and had established those two excellent foundations of the state, the auspices and the senate, he obtained this great meed: for when he had disappeared upon a sudden obscuration of the sun, he was deemed to have been placed among the number of the gods. A belief which no mortal had ever inspired without the greatest pre-eminence in virtue. And this is most to be admired in Romulus, that others who are said to have been deified out of the mortal state, lived in the less civilized ages of man, when the proneness to fiction was great, and the unenlightened were easily led to believe in it. But during the period of Romulus, not quite six hundred years ago, we know that learning and literature existed, and that the ancient errors peculiar to the uncultivated ages of mankind were removed. For if Rome, according to an investigation of the annals of the Greeks, was built in the second year of the seventh olympiad; the reign of Romulus occurred at that period when Greece was full of poets and musicians; and when but little faith would be given to fabulous stories, unless they were concerning very ancient things. For one hundred and eight years after Lycurgus ordained laws to be written, the first olympiad was established: which through a mistake in the name, some have thought to be founded by Lycurgus. Homer, however, by those who take the lowest period, is made to precede Lycurgus about thirty years. From which it may be gathered that Homer flourished many years before Romulus. So that there was scarce room in so intelligent an age, and amid so many learned men, for any one to establish fictions. Antiquity sometimes has received fables crudely devised, but that age already