The Greeks likewise
tell us that on that day an eclipse of the sun took place, which they
think was that observed by Antimachus of Teos, the epic poet, which
occurred in the third year of the sixth Olympiad. In the time of Varro
the philosopher, who of all the Romans was most deeply versed in Roman
history, there was one Taroutius, a companion of his, a philosopher and
mathematician, who had especially devoted himself to the art of casting
nativities, and was thought to have attained great skill therein. To
this man Varro proposed the task of finding the day and hour of
Romulus's birth, basing his calculations on the influence which the
stars were said to have had upon his life, just as geometricians solve
their problems by the analytic method; for it belongs, he argued, to the
same science to predict the life of a man from the time of his birth,
and to find the date of a man's birth if the incidents of his life are
given. Taroutius performed his task, and after considering the things
done and suffered by Romulus, the length of his life, the manner of his
death, and all such like matters, he confidently and boldly asserted
that Romulus was conceived by his mother in the first year of the second
Olympiad, at the third hour of the twenty-third day of the month which
is called in the Egyptian calendar _Choiac_, at which time there was a
total eclipse of the sun. He stated that he was born on the twenty-first
day of the month _Thouth_, about sunrise.
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