ROMEO AND JULIET 



:>uor. 



ROMULUS 



The first settlement was made in 1760. Fort 

 Stanwix was a storm center during the Revolu- 

 tionary War, and in the vicinity the famous 

 Battle of Oriskany was fought, in August. 1777. 

 Here for the first time the enemy saw the new 

 emblem of the nation, adopted by Con^i 

 June 14. 1777 (see FLAG, subtitle I'nitcd States 

 Flag). Stanwix was the only one of thirteen 

 frontier forts to resist the attacks of the English 

 from the north. Rome became a town in 1796, 

 wa& incorporated as a village in 1819 and was 

 chartered as a city in 1870. The arsenal estab- 

 here in 1814 was sold as a factory in 1873. 



RO'MEO AND JULIET, joo'lict, a tragedy 

 by Shakespeare, printed first in 1597, and in a 

 corrected form two years later. The immediate 

 source of the plot was a poem, the Tragicall 

 Hittorye of Romeus and Juliet, written in 1560 

 by Arthur Brooke, but the story was an old 

 one and had appeared in various forms. The 

 theme is the love of Romeo, of the house of 

 Montague, and Juliet, of the house of Capulet, 

 and the tragedy is brought about by the age- 

 long feud which exists between the two fami- 

 lies. Over the dead bodies of the young lovers 

 the quarrel is finally laid aside. The roles of 

 the title characters have always been favorites, 

 particularly with young actors and actresses. 

 Of recent years E. H. Sothern and Julia Mar- 

 lowe are the most distinguished players who 

 have taken the parts. Bellini and Gounod each 

 used the Romeo and Juliet story as a basis for 

 an opera, and Berlioz wrote a dramatic sym- 

 phony on the subject. Among familiar quota- 

 tions from Shakespeare's play are these : 



The weakest goes to the wall. 



What's In a name? That which we call a rose 



By any other name would smell as sweet. 



Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. 



My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne. 



ROMULUS, rom'ulus, the legendary first 

 king of Rome and the founder of the city. He 

 and his twin brother, Remus, were held to be 

 sons of Mars and Rhea Silvia, who was a 

 daughter of Numitor, king of Alba. Amulius, 

 brother of Numitor, who had usurped the Al- 

 ban throne, ordered the mother to be buried 

 alive because she had broken her vestal vows 

 and the two children to be thrown into the 

 Tiber. The river, however, received them 

 kindly, and bore them to a little bank, wlu-iv 

 it cast them ashore at the foot of a fig tree. 

 Here they were found by a she-wolf, who cared 

 for them until they were discovered by the 

 shepherd Faustulus and by him taken to his 

 own home. They were brought up with his 



children and became strong and handsome 

 young men, fond of the sports of the shepherds 

 but showing in all their superior birth. 



Legendary Founding of Rome. One day Re- 

 mus became involved in a quarrel with the 

 shepherds of Numitor, before whom he was 

 ia ken for judgment. Romulus came to his res- 

 cue, and the bearing of the young man so im- 



THE SUPPOSED WALL OF ROMULUS 

 A part of the wall believed to have been built 

 at the founding of Rome. 



pressed Numitor that he inquired as to the 

 story of their lives. The secret of their birth 

 being discovered, a plan was made by which 

 the usurper Amulius was driven from the 

 throne of Alba, and Numitor was restored. 

 Soon afterward the young men decided to build 

 a new city on the Tiber River, at the spot 

 where their lives had been saved by the wolf. 

 They fell into a quarrel as to its exact location, 

 and submitted their dispute to the decision of 

 the gods ; the oracle having decided in favor of 

 Romulus, he began at once to mark out the 

 boundaries of his city with a plow. He turned 

 the furrows inward and lifted the plow to mark 

 the space for his gates, enclosing within the 

 limits the Palatine Hill and a little land at its 

 base. Remus contemptuously leaped over this 

 boundary, saying that such a wall could never 

 protect a city. With the exclamation "So per- 

 ish whoever shall hereafter cross these walls," 

 Romulus struck his brother and slew him, an 

 act which he instantly regretted. 



