XXII.  It is said also that Romulus instituted the service of the sacred fire of Vestae, and the holy virgins who keep it up, called Vestals.  Others attribute this to Numa, though they say that Romulus was a very religious prince, and learned in divination, for which purpose he used to carry the crooked staff called lituus, with which to divide the heavens into spaces for the observation of the flight of birds.  This, which is preserved in the Palatium, was lost when the city was taken by the Gauls; but afterwards, when the barbarians had been repulsed, it was found unharmed in a deep bed of ashes, where everything else had been burned or spoiled.  He also enacted some laws, the most arbitrary of which is that a wife cannot obtain a divorce from her husband, but that a husband may put away his wife for poisoning her children, counterfeiting keys, or adultery.  If any one put away his wife on other grounds than these, he enacted that half his property should go to his wife, and half to the temple of Ceres.  A man who divorced his wife was to make an offering to the Chthonian gods.[A] A peculiarity of his legislation is that, while he laid down no course of procedure in case of parricide, he speaks of all murder by the name of parricide, as though the one were an abominable, but the other an impossible crime.  And for many years it appeared that he had rightly judged, for no one attempted anything of the kind at Rome for nearly six hundred years; but it is said that the first parricide was that of Lucius Hostilius, which he committed after the war with Hannibal.  Enough has now been said upon these subjects.

[Footnote A:  Chthonian gods are the gods of the world below.]

XXIII.  In the fifth year of the reign of Tatius, some of his relatives fell in with ambassadors from Laurentum, on their way to Rome, and endeavoured to rob them.  As the ambassadors would not submit to this, but defended themselves, they slew them.  Romulus at once gave it as his opinion that the authors of this great and audacious crime ought to be punished, but Tatius hushed the matter up, and enabled them to escape.  This is said to have been the only occasion upon which they were openly at variance, for in all other matters they acted with the greatest possible unanimity.  The relatives, however, of the murdered men, as they were hindered by Tatius from receiving any satisfaction, fell upon him when he and Romulus were offering sacrifice at Lavinium, and slew him, but respected Romulus, and praised him as a just man.  He brought home the body of Tatius, and buried it honourably.  It lies near what is called the Armilustrium, on Mount Aventine.