refined, and especially deriding improbable events, has rejected * * * [About 230 letters wanting.] * * * * Simonides was born in the fifty-sixth olympiad, by which the credit given to the immortality of Romulus may be more easily understood, seeing that the institutions of society were then so well established, organized, and known. But really so great was the force of his genius and virtue, that what men would have given no credit to for many ages in favour of any other man, was believed of Romulus upon the evidence of Proculus Julius, a countryman, who at the instigation of the fathers, in order to repel from themselves every suspicion of the death of Romulus, is said to have declared in the assembly, that he had seen Romulus on that mount which is now called Quirinal; and that he had commanded him to request the people to erect a temple for him upon that hill; that he was a god, and was called Quirinus. XI. “Do not you perceive therefore a new people not only sprung from the wisdom of one man, and not left crying in leading strings, but already grown up, and almost an adult?” “Indeed we perceive it,” said Lælius, “and that you have entered upon a new method of discussion, which is no where to be found in the writings of the Greeks. For that pre-eminent person,[14] whom no one has excelled in writing, has imagined to himself a situation, in which he might construct his city after his own pleasure: admirable enough perhaps, but foreign to the conduct and the manners of men. Others have discussed the subject in relation to the kinds and causes of governments, but not under any particular example of a form of government. You seem to me to be about to do both, for according to your method, you appear to prefer to attribute to others what you yourself have observed, than to imagine a state of things, as Socrates is made to do in Plato. And these matters respecting the foundation of the city, you suppose to be part of a system, which were only adopted by Romulus through necessity or chance. And your discourse is not of a desultory kind, but concerning a particular commonwealth. Wherefore proceed as you have begun, for already I perceive you are about to follow on with the other kings, as perfecting the government.”