The greatest debt they owed to their new settlers was the low round arch, built with stones set in mortar in such a way that the greater the weight, the firmer the arch would be. Another Etruscan trick was plastering over the side of a drain or a bank with a mixture of small stones stirred thickly into mortar like plums in a pudding. The best of this new way of working was that it could be done so quickly. A great deal of the work could be done by stupid and ignorant laborers under the direction of those who knew how to direct. Men whom they could not employ in any sort of skilled labor could help here. Such men were glad enough to come for an allowance of food and drink. A certain task was set them, and they had their living for that; if they did more, they had an extra allowance. The task was called _moenia_, and since it was the lowest and least skilled labor, work of that kind later came to be known as _menial_, the work of slaves and servants.
The change in the face of the plain in the following years was almost like magic. The colonists built dykes to keep the river from overflowing; they built drains to carry off the heavy rains; they built culverts; they built bridges resting on solid arches; and they made one great drain which carried off so much of the overflow water that it made the Square Hill and most of the land around it safe. In fact, a part of every year thereafter was given to the improvement and protection of newly cleared farmlands by stonework. People came from a great distance to see the dyke they built, for nothing like it had been done on that side of the river. The people in the lowlands villages, relieved from the fear of floods, were proud to call themselves the servants of the Romans. In those early years a beginning was made of the great engineering work that was to endure for centuries. The people of the Square Hill were doing on a very small scale what nobody had done before them in that part of the world. In their masonry and their farming they gave all their poorer neighbors reason to be glad they were located where they were. It was a peaceful conquering of village after village.
When the country had grown peaceful, and there was no more need, for the time, of sending out warlike expeditions, it began to be seen that the soldiers who had come in with Romulus or had joined the troops later must have something to do. Romulus talked the matter over seriously with the fathers of the colony. If these men were to settle down as citizens, taking part in the life of the city—and some of them wished to do so—they ought to have homes; they needed wives. The family life of this people was the very heart of their religion and their society. The father was high priest in his family. The public worship was only a greater family worship, in which all had a part, old and young, living and dead. The gods themselves were often present unseen to receive prayers and offerings,—so the people believed.