The word rape in
this context means "abduction" (from the Latin rapere,
to grab, later meaning 'steal', and finally to sexually assault,
presumably from the idea of stealing virtue). It refers to an
event supposed to have occurred in the early history of Rome,
shortly after its foundation by Romulus and a group of mostly
male followers. Seeking wives in order to found families, the
Romans negotiated with the Sabines,
who populated the area. The Sabines refused to allow their women
to marry the Romans, fearing the emergence of a rival culture.
Faced with the extinction of their community, the Romans planned
to abduct Sabine women. Romulus invited Sabine families to a
festival of Neptune
Equester. At the meeting he gave a signal, at which the Romans
grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men. The indignant
abductees were implored by Romulus to accept Roman husbands.
Livy is clear that no sexual assault took
place. On the contrary, Romulus offered them free choice and
promised civic and property rights to women. According to Livy
he spoke to them each in person, "and
pointed out to them that it was all owing to the pride of their
parents in denying right of intermarriage to their neighbours.
They would live in honourable wedlock, and share all their property
and civil rights, and—dearest of all to human nature—would
be the mothers of free men."1
The women married Roman men, but the Sabines went to war with
the Romans. The conflict was eventually resolved when the women,
who now had children by their Roman husbands, intervened in a
battle to reconcile the warring parties.
[They] went boldly into the midst of
the flying missiles with dishevelled hair and rent garments.
Running across the space between the two armies they tried
to stop any further fighting and calm the excited passions
by appealing to their fathers in the one army and their husbands
in the other not to bring upon themselves a curse by staining
their hands with the blood of a father-in-law or a son-in-law,
nor upon their posterity the taint of parricide. "If," they cried, "you
are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds,
then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause
of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands
and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without
one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans."2
1"The Rape of the Sabine Women." Wikipedia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women>
[Accessed September 24, 2007].
2Livy: "The Rape of the Sabines"
<http://home.flash.net/~cohan/readings/Livysabine.html>
[Accessed September 24, 2007]. |
