ABSTRACT
The story of the theft of the Sabine women occupies an important position in Roman ideology. It was closely associated with the very foundation of Rome, one expression of the daring and resourcefulness that characterized Romulus, the city’s legendary founder. The story, moreover, figures prominently in the ambitious works of major authors of antiquity who sought to provide a comprehensive interpretation of Roman character. Thus, the story is included in Cicero’s De Republica, written between 54 and 51 b.c.e., during the turbulent last years of the Roman Republic. This adaptation of Plato’s Republic locates the potentiality for an ideal state not in theoretical speculation, but in specifically Roman traditions and institutions. During the following decades, under Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, the story was included in the efforts of Dionysius of Halicarnassus to reveal the essence of Rome to his Greek readers by an encyclopedic review of early Roman history in his Antiquitates Romanae [henceforth AR]; in the Latin history of Livy, who wrote a narrative that ultimately traced Rome in 142 books from its foundation to his own age some 750 years later; and in the work of a slightly younger contemporary, Ovid, who recounted the theft in his Fasti [henceforth F], a poetic survey of Roman religious festivals as expressions of traditional Roman values. A century and a half later, the Greek Plutarch included the story of the Sabine women in a biography of Romulus, which he paired with that of Theseus, the legendary founder of Athens. It is in these works, spanning the critical period from the collapse of Republican government at Rome through the consolidation of the Empire, that I want to examine different stories which represent the theft of the Sabine women as a cornerstone of Roman society.
