forest make room for the new growth of spring, although they fall unseen by human eyes, so has this unknown city of the Seven Mounts made room for the Rome of history.
The Hill-Romans on the Quirinal. But the Palatine city was not the only one that in ancient times existed within the circle afterwards enclosed by the Servian walls; opposite to it, in its immediate vicinity, there lay a second city on the Quirinal. The "old stronghold" (Capitolium vetus) with a sanctuary of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and a temple of the god of Fidelity, in which state treaties were publicly deposited, forms the evident counterpart of the later Capitol with its temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and with its temple of Fides Romana likewise destined as it were for a repository of international law, and furnishes clear proof that the Quirinal also was once the centre of an independent commonwealth. The same fact may be inferred from the double worship of Mars on the Palatine and the Quirinal; for Mars was the type of the warrior, and the oldest chief divinity of the burgess communities of Italy. Connected with this is the further circumstance that his ministers, the two primitive colleges of the "Leapers" (Salii) and of the "Wolves" (Luperci), existed in the later Rome in duplicate: by the side of the Salii of the Palatine there were also Salii of the Quirinal; by the side of the Quinctian Luperci of the Palatine there was a Fabian guild of Luperci, which in all probability had their sanctuary on the Quirinal.[1]
All these indications, which in themselves even are of great weight, become more significant when we recollect that the accurately known circuit of the Palatine city of the
- ↑ That the Quinctian Luperci had precedence in rank over the Fabian is evident from the circumstance, that the fabulists attribute the Quinctii to Romulus, the Fabii to Remus (Ovid. Fast. ii. 373, seq.; Vict. De Orig. 22). That the Fabii belonged to the Hill-Romans is shown by the sacrifice of their gens on the Quirinal (Liv. v. 46, 52), whether that sacrifice may or may not have been connected with the Lupercalia.
Moreover, the Lupercus of the former college is called in inscriptions (Orelli 2253) Lupercus Quinctialis vetus; and the prænomen Kæso, which was most probably connected with the Lupercal worship (v. Rhein. Mus. N. F. xv. 179), is found exclusively among the Quinctii and Fabii: the forms commonly occurring in authors, Lupercus Quinctilius and Quinctilianus, are therefore inaccurate, and the college belonged, not to the comparatively recent Quinctilii, but to the far older Quinctii. When, again, the Quinctii (Liv. i. 30), or Quinctilii (Dion. iii. 29), are named among the Alban clans, the latter reading is to be preferred, while the Quinctii are to be regarded as an old Roman gens.
