Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Myths and Legends: The Rape of the Sabine Women

The Rape of the Sabine Women. To find out more about the early Romans and the Sabine women, see this Wikipedia article: link; for information about the image: image source.

This is a legend from the early days of Rome, shortly after its founding by Romulus. This first generation of Romans was made up of men, with a serious short of women, unlike their neighbors, the Sabines, who had been living there for a long time already. The Sabines, however, did not allowed their women to marry the Romans. Romulus then decided to take the women by force: he invited the Sabines to a festival and, during the celebration, the Roman men grabbed the Sabine women and fought off the Sabine men, as depicted in today's image.

You can also find more myths and legends for the week of June 3-9 here. For more information and links to the actual javascript code, see the Myths & Legends Widget Reference Page.