ABSTRACT
In seeking to form some impression of what Roman family life was like and how children were brought up in the days before the second Punic War, it is best to look first at the Sabines, the near neighbours of the Romans, with whom they then had much in common. Both were agricultural communities, and historically they were closely connected. There is good reason to believe that from the regal period onwards, despite intermittent border warfare, there was a continuing Sabine element in the Roman population. [1] But after their final defeat by M.’ Curius Dentatus in 290 B.C. much of their homeland was parcelled out in small farming plots, and many from Rome itself and the surrounding districts went to live and work in the Sabine country, following the same way of life and developing the same characteristics. [2] Here, in the hilly terrain north-east of Rome towards the Apennines, they found conditions in many places much harder than in Latium, and, according to the early annalist Fabius Pictor, it was only when the Romans conquered the Sabines that they began to realize how prosperous they were themselves. [3]
