Romney
GEORGE, an English painter; born in Reckside, Lancashire, Dec. 26, 1734. He was the son of a carpenter, and at first worked at his father's trade, but he afterward was apprenticed to an itinerant artist named Steele, and at the age of 23 began the career of a painter. After a certain amount of local success he went to London in 1762, and next year won a prize offered by the Society of Art for a historical composition. He steadily rose in popularity, and was finally recognized as inferior only to Reynolds and Gainsborough as a portrait painter; some critics even placed him higher than either. His residence in London was interrupted by occasional visits to the wolf, and afterward brought up by a Remus, the babes were suckled by a she ered, and they determined to found a city on the banks of the Tiber, the scene of their exposure. The right to choose the site was acquired by Romulus; and Remus not acquiescing, in his disappointment, was slain. Inhabitants for the new city were found by establishing a refuge for murderers and fugitive slaves on the Capitoline hills, and by carrying off the Sabine maidens at a to which they were invited. This led to war with the Sabines, which ended, through the intervention of the Sabine women, in a union of Romans and Sabines, under their two kings, Romulus and Titus Tatius. The latter was soon slain, and Romulus reigned alone. He was regarded as the author of the fundamental division of the people into tribes, curiæ, and gentes, and of the institution of the senate and the comitia curiata. The date commonly assigned for the foundation of Rome is 753 B. C.
The tomb in which the body of Romulus is alleged to have been interred was discovered in January, 1899, in the Roman Forum, near the arch of Septimus Severus, along the Via Sacra. A large slab of black marble, measuring four square meters, was found, exactly cor- RONA responding to the description of the tomb of Romulus alluded to by Varro as "Lapis Niger." This stone differs from ordinary Roman silicium, and comes from Cape Tenarium, in Greece, thus proving that communication existed between Rome and Greece in the most remote period. For many centuries, till the fall of the Roman empire, the tomb of Romulus was considered a sacred shrine by the Romans. The discovery is incalculably valuable to historians and archæologists, proving the fact, often doubted and ridiculed, especially by the German school, that a black stone, surrounded by a marble inclosure one meter high, was missing from the E. side of the Rostra Julia.