proposal with disdain. 9.  Rom’ulus, therefore, proclaimed a feast, in honour of Neptune,[2] throughout all the neighbouring villages, and made the most magnificent preparations for celebrating it.  These feasts were generally preceded by sacrifices, and ended in shows of wrestlers, gladiators, and chariot-courses.  The Sab’ines, as he had expected, were among the foremost who came to be spectators, bringing their wives and daughters with them, to share the pleasures of the sight. 10.  In the mean time the games began, and while the strangers were most intent upon the spectacle, a number of the Roman youth rushed in among them with drawn swords, seized the youngest and most beautiful women, and carried them off by violence.  In vain the parents protested against this breach of hospitality; the virgins were carried away and became the wives of the Romans.

11.  A bloody war ensued.  The cities of Cae’nina,[3] Antem’nae,[4] and Crustumi’num,[5] were the first who resolved to avenge the common cause, which the Sab’ines seemed too dilatory in pursuing.  But all these, by making separate inroads, became an easy conquest to Rom’ulus, who made the most merciful use of his victories; instead of destroying their towns, or lessening their numbers, he only placed colonies of Romans in them, to serve as a frontier to repress more distant invasions.

12.  Ta’tius, king of Cures, a Sabine city, was the last, although the most formidable, who undertook to revenge the disgrace his country had suffered.  He entered the Roman territories at the head of twenty-five thousand men, and not content with a superiority of forces, he added stratagem also. 13.  Tarpe’ia, who was daughter to the commander of the Capit’oline hill, happened to fall into his hands, as she went without the walls of the city to fetch water.  Upon her he prevailed, by means of large promises, to betray one of the gates to his army.  The reward she engaged for, was what the soldiers wore on their arms, by which she meant their bracelets.  They, however, either mistaking her meaning, or willing to punish her perfidy, threw their bucklers upon her as they entered, and crushed her to death. 14.  The Sab’ines being thus possessed of the Capit’oline, after some time a general engagement ensued, which was renewed for several days, with almost equal success, and neither army could think of submitting; it was in the valley between the Capit’oline and Quiri’nal hills that the last engagement was fought between the Romans and the Sab’ines. 15.  The battle was now become general, and the slaughter prodigious; when the attention of both sides was suddenly turned from the scene of horror before them to another.  The Sab’ine women, who had been carried off by the Romans, flew in between the combatants, with their hair loose, and their ornaments neglected, regardless of their own danger; and, with loud outcries, implored their husbands and their fathers to desist.  Upon this the combatants, as if by natural impulse, let