One thing he could see very clearly, and that was that for a long time yet the colonists would have to give especial attention to disciplined warfare. He wished that there were more of them. If they ever had a quarrel with the dark Etruscans beyond the river, it would be a fight for life, for the Etruscans outnumbered them ten to one. It would be well to trade with them so far as they could, but there again the customs of the colonists were against him. There was not much that they wished to buy.
When he left the land beyond the river, he paid a farewell visit to the old witch, and she told him again that he was born to rule. He hoped that he was.
When he came back to the Square Hill, he found the fathers of the colony confronting a new problem, which they had no tradition to help them settle. The problem was what to do with the new settlers who were coming in for protection and in the hope of getting a living, but who were not of their own people. Often they had not intelligence enough to understand what the colonists meant by their customs. This was something that Romulus had expected. He had his answer ready. He said that there was a god of whom he had heard, called Asylos, who protected homeless persons and serfs who had escaped from cruel masters, and that they might set apart a space outside the walls and dedicate it to this god. There his own soldiers could live, and there would be a place for any one who came who would work for a living. And this was done. The people who came in from various places seeking protection, and were useful in various ways even if they could only hew wood and draw water, were called after awhile the _plebs_, the men who helped to fill the town. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it, that every pair of hands was of value. It would not do to let every one who came become a citizen, an inhabitant of the city, because that might destroy all comfort and order within the walls. But the town grew much faster when it became known that any man not a criminal could get a living there.
Another circumstance that made it grow was that the country people and the villagers from farther up the river began to bring down what they had to sell. Sometimes the Etruscans bought of them, and sometimes the Romans did. It was the last riverside settlement before the boats went down to the sea, and it began to be a trading as well as a farming place not many years after the colonists settled there.