82 THESEUS AND ROMULUS.

Wished in matrimony, time can witness ; for in two hun- dred and thirty years, neither any husband deserted his wife, nor any wife her husband ; but, as the curious among the Greeks can name the first case of parricide or matri- cide, so the Romans all well know that Spurius Carvilius was the first who put away his' wife, accusing her of bar- renness. The immediate results were similar ; for upon those marriages the two princes shared in the dominion, and both nations fell under the same government. But from the marriages of Theseus proceeded nothing of friendship or correspondence for the advantage of com- merce, but enmities and wars and the slaughter of citi- zens, and, at last, the loss of the city Aphidnte, when only out of the compassion of the enemy, whom they entreated and caressed like gods, they escaped suffering what Troy did by Paris. Theseus's mother, however, was not only in danger, but suffered actually what Hecuba did, desert- ed and neglected by her son, unless her captivity be not a fiction, as I could wish both that and other things were. The circumstances of the divine intervention, said to have preceded or accompanied their births, are also in contrast ; for Eomulus was preserved by the special favor of the gods ; but the oracle given to iEgeus, commanding him to abstain, seems to demonstrate that the birth of The-

seus was not agreeable to the will of the gods.