HKB
variously called the Roman and Great games. By the same king also spaces round the forum were assigned to private individuals for building on; covered walks and shops were erected.
He was also preparing to surround the city with a stone wall, when a war with the Sabines interrupted his plans. The whole thing was so sudden, that the enemy passed the Anio before the Roman army could meet and prevent them: great alarm therefore was felt at Rome. At first they fought with doubtful success, and with great slaughter on both sides. After this, the enemy's forces were led back into camp, and the Romans having thus gained time to make preparations for the war afresh, Tarquin, thinking that the weak point of his army lay specially in the want of cavalry, determined to add other centuries to the Ramnenses, Titienses, and Luceres which Romulus had enrolled, and to leave them distinguished by his own name. Because Romulus had done this after inquiries by augury, Attus Navius, a celebrated soothsayer of the day, insisted that no alteration or new appointment could be made, unless the birds had approved of it. The king, enraged at this, and, as they say, mocking at his art, said, "Come, thou diviner, tell me, whether what I have in my mind can be done or not?" When Attus, having tried the matter by divination, affirmed that it certainly could, "Well, then," said he, "I was thinking that you should cut asunder this whetstone with a razor. Take it, then, and perform what thy birds portend can be done." Thereupon they say that he immediately cut the whetstone in two. A statue of Attus, with his head veiled, was erected in the comitium, close to the steps on the left of the senate-house, on the spot where the event occurred. They say also that the whetstone was deposited in the same place that it might remain as a record of that miracle to posterity. Without doubt so much honour accrued to auguries and the college of augurs, that nothing was subsequently undertaken either in peace or war without taking the auspices, and assemblies of the people, the summoning of armies, and the most important affairs of state were put off, whenever the birds did not prove propitious. Nor did Tarquin then make any other alteration in the centuries of horse, except that he doubled the number of men in each of these divisions, so that the three centuries consisted of one thousand eight hundred knights; only, those that were added were called "the younger," but by the same names as the earlier, which, because they have been doubled, they now call the six centuries.