After paying due worship to the gods, he summoned the multitude to an assembly; and, knowing that they could never be brought to incorporate as one people, by any other means, than by having their conduct directed by certain rules, he gave them a body of laws;* and judging, that if he added to the dignity of his own carriage, by assuming the ensigns of sovereignty, it would help to procure respect to those laws, among a rude uninformed people, he adopted a more majestic style of appearance, both with regard to his other appointments, and particularly in being attended by twelve lictors. Some think that he was led to fix on this number by that of the birds in the augury which had portended the kingdom to him: I am rather inclined to be of their opinion, who suppose that all the officers attendant on magistrates, and among the rest, the lictors, as well as the number of them, were borrowed from their neighbours, the Etrurians, from whom the curule chair, and the gown edged with purple, were taken; and that the Etrurians, used that number, because their King being elected by the suffrages of twelve states, each state gave him one lictor. Meanwhile the city increased in buildings, which were c............