Hersilia- Roman FigureMortal"Queen of Rome"

The Seizure

Romulus had a city and no women. The neighboring peoples refused intermarriage, so Romulus invited the Sabines to a festival for the god Consus. At his signal, the Roman men seized the Sabine women. Livy records the scene: the young women ran screaming through the festival grounds while their fathers fled.

Hersilia was among those taken. Plutarch says she was already married when she was seized, carried off by mistake in the confusion. Dionysius gives her a different origin: she came willingly, or was given to Romulus by arrangement. The accounts disagree on how she arrived. They agree on what she became: wife of Romulus, first queen of Rome.

Between the Armies

The Sabine king Titus Tatius marched on Rome to recover the women. The two armies met in the valley between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. Livy gives the moment to the women. As the lines closed, the Sabine wives ran onto the battlefield carrying their infants. They threw themselves between the spears. Hersilia spoke to both sides: the Sabines were about to kill their daughters' husbands, the Romans their wives' fathers. The fighting stopped.

The two peoples merged. Romulus and Titus Tatius ruled jointly. The thirty Roman curiae were named after the thirty Sabine women, and Rome was no longer one people but two made one.

Hora Quirini

Romulus vanished during a storm on the Campus Martius. Some said the senators tore him apart; the official account held that he was snatched up to heaven and became the god Quirinus. Hersilia wept and would not stop.

Ovid tells what happened next. Juno sent Iris to the Quirinal hill where Hersilia stood grieving. A star fell from the sky and caught in her hair. The fire did not burn her. It lifted her. She rose from the hill and was carried into the heavens, where Romulus waited for her in his new form. She became Hora Quirini, his divine consort, and the founders of Rome joined the gods together.