Selecting a magnificent situation upon the Tiber, where, after leaving the mountain range it had entered the campagna, Romulus occupied the Palatine Hill, the site of an ancient fortress, with a tribe of the Latins of which he was the chief. Tradition derived his descent from the chiefs of Alba, which is a matter of secondary importance. The new settlement grew with marvelous rapidity, if the statement is reliable that at the close of his life the military forces numbered 46,000 foot and 1,000 horse, which would indicate some 200,000 people in the city and in the surrounding region under its protection. Livy remarks that it was an ancient device (_vetus consilium_) of the founders of cities to draw to themselves an obscure and humble multitude, and then set up for their progeny the autocthonic claim.[339] Romulus pursuing this ancient policy is said to have opened an asylum near the Palatine, and to have invited all persons in the surrounding tribe, without regard to character or condition, to share with his tribes the advantages and the destiny of the new city. A great crowd of people, Livy further remarks, fled to this place from the surrounding territories, slave as well as free, which was the first accession of foreign strength to the new undertaking.[340] Plutarch,[341] and Dionysius[342] both refer to the asylum or grove, the opening of which, for the object and with the success named, was an event of probable occurrence. It tends to show that the people of Italy had then become numerous for barbarians, and that discontent prevailed among them in consequence, doubtless, of the imperfect protection of personal rights, the existence of domestic slavery, and the apprehension of violence. Of such a state of things a wise man would naturally avail himself if he possessed sufficient military genius to handle the class of men thus brought together. The next important event in this romantic narrative, of which the reader should be reminded, was the assault of the Sabines to avenge the entrapment of the Sabine virgins, now the honored wives of their captors. It resulted in a wise accommodation under which the Latins and Sabines coalesced into one society, but each division retaining its own military leader. The Sabines occupied the Quirinal and Capitoline Hills. Thus was added the principal part of the second tribe, the Tities, under Titius Tatius their military chief. After the death of the latter they all fell under the military command of Romulus.