Titus Tatius- Roman FigureMortal"King of the Sabines"

The March on Rome

After Romulus abducted the Sabine women during the festival of Consus, Titus Tatius assembled the Sabine army and marched south. Livy records what happened next. The Sabines reached the Capitoline hill and could not take it by force, but Tarpeia, daughter of the Roman garrison commander, opened the gates. The price she asked was "what they wore on their left arms," meaning their gold bracelets. The Sabines crushed her under their shields instead.

With the Capitoline taken, the battle moved to the valley between the hills, the ground that would become the Roman Forum. Livy and Plutarch describe the fighting as desperate. Romans and Sabines killed each other in the mud of a swamp that had not yet been drained.

The Women Between the Armies

The abducted women ended the war. They ran between the lines with their infants in their arms, begging their Sabine fathers not to kill their Roman husbands, and their Roman husbands not to kill their fathers. Livy gives them a speech: they would rather die themselves than live as widows or orphans on either side.

The armies stopped. Tatius and Romulus negotiated on the field. The two peoples merged into one. Tatius brought the Sabines down from the hills into Rome, and the two kings ruled together, each with his own court. Varro traced the citizen-title Quirites to Tatius's capital of Cures.

Lavinium

The joint rule did not last. Allies of Tatius murdered ambassadors from the city of Lavinium. Tatius shielded the killers from punishment. When he traveled to Lavinium to offer sacrifice, the families of the dead ambassadors found him at the altar and killed him there.

Romulus did not press the matter. Livy notes that he accepted the death without pursuing vengeance, as though the punishment fit. He ruled alone after that. The Sabine people stayed in Rome.