Besides these fraternities there were two important groups of men who were not exactly rulers, but were chosen because of their especial knowledge. These were the six Augurs, who were skilled in watching and explaining omens, and the Bridge Builders, the Priesthood of the Bridge, who were skillful in measuring and constructing and building. There were five of these, the head priest being called the Pontifex Maximus or High Pontiff.
Instead of being a large and rather straggling town growing so fast that it was hard to know how to govern it, Rome was really taking on the look of an orderly and prosperous city.
Sometimes, when the children of the first colonists looked back at the simple village life they could just remember, and then looked about them at the many-colored life that had gathered on the Seven Hills, it seemed to them almost like another world. Yet in their homes they still kept the old customs and the old worship, and the servants they had gathered about them were very proud of being part of a Roman household.
There was one danger, however, which nobody realized in the least. In the great change from farm life to city life, the mere crowding together of people is a danger. The fever which had broken out in the early days of the settlement broke out again. This time it swept away lives by the hundred. The poor people were frightened almost out of their wits, and ran out of their houses and spread the disease before any one understood that it could be caught. Emilia had a maid who came back from a visit to her brother on the Quirinal and died before morning. In less than a week Emilia herself and her little son were dead also, and Romulus was left alone.
Nothing seemed able to harm him. He went among the poorest, and by his fearless courage kept them from going mad with fear. When the fever passed his hair had begun to turn from black to gray.
He heard somewhere of the drink that Faustulus the shepherd had taught Mamurius how to make when the sickness came before, and he remembered other things Faustulus had said of the fever. When the pestilence was gone, he called the fathers of the city together, and they took counsel how to keep it from coming back.
Tullius, who was now an old man, said that in his opinion bad water was the cause of much sickness. The fever began in a part of the city where there was no drainage.