The Sabines: The History and Legacy of the People Who Lived in Central Italy Before the Founding of Rome

The year 753 B.C. has been immortalized as the birth year of Rome, the Eternal City, which according to legend was founded by the brothers Romulus and Remus. When Remus was killed, allegedly by Romulus or one of his followers, Romulus’s new city found itself with a male-to-female ratio that was severely unbalanced, and the Romans on Palatine Hill had trouble spawning the next generation. To remedy this problem, the men, under Romulus's orders, kidnapped Latin and Sabine women from nearby hills, raping them and intimidating them into marriage. Latin and Sabine forces later attempted to retrieve the unarmed women, only to be stopped by the Sabine women themselves. According to the Roman historian Livy, the Sabine women, “from the outrage on whom the war originated, with hair disheveled and garments rent, the timidity of their sex being overcome by such dreadful scenes, had the courage to throw themselves amid the flying weapons, and making a rush across, to part the incensed armies, and assuage their fury; imploring their fathers on the one side, their husbands on the other, 'that as fathers-in-law and sons-in-law they would not contaminate each other with impious blood, nor stain their offspring with parricide…” After that, many of the Sabines joined Rome itself, and the “Rape of the Sabine Women” became a cornerstone story for the establishment of Rome and a topic of art.

As gripping as the story has been for over 2,500 years, modern historians agree that it is mere legend, and of course, it has also obscured the actual history of the Sabines themselves. The Sabines were Italic people whose homeland lay in the rugged mountains of the central Apennines, and they occupy a rather peculiar place in ancient history, for they were neither a powerful empire nor were they a dominant military power.