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But possibly we are to find the reason for this neglect of the Romans
by their gods, in the saying of Sallust, that "equity and virtue
prevailed among the Romans not more by force of laws than of nature."
I presume it is to this inborn equity and goodness of disposition we
are to ascribe the rape of the Sabine women. What, indeed, could be
more equitable and virtuous, than to carry off by force, as each man
was fit, and without their parents' consent, girls who were strangers
and guests, and who had been decoyed and entrapped by the pretence of a
spectacle! If the Sabines were wrong to deny their daughters when the
Romans asked for them, was it not a greater wrong in the Romans to
carry them off after that denial? The Romans might more justly have
waged war against the neighboring nation for having refused their
daughters in marriage when they first sought them, than for having
demanded them back when they had stolen them. War should have been
proclaimed at first; it was then that Mars should have helped his
warlike son, that he might by force of arms avenge the injury done him
by the refusal of marriage, and might also thus win the women he
desired. There might have been some appearance of "right of war" in
a victor carrying off, in virtue of this right, the virgins who had
been without any show of right denied him; whereas there was no "right
of peace" entitling him to carry off those who were not given to him,
and to wage an unjust war with their justly enraged parents. One happy
circumstance was indeed connected with this. act of violence, viz.,
that though it was commemorated by the games of the circus, yet even
this did not constitute it a precedent in the city or realm of Rome.
If one would find fault with the results of this act, it must rather
be on the ground that the Romans made Romulus a god in spite of his
perpetrating this iniquity; for one cannot reproach them with making
this deed any kind of precedent for the rape of women.
Again, I presume it was due to this natural equity and virtue, that
after the expulsion of King Tarquin, whose son had violated
Lucretia, Junius Brutus the consul forced Lucius Tarquinius
Collatinus, Lucretia's husband and his own colleague, a good and
innocent man, to resign his office and go into banishment, on the one
sole charge that he was of the name and blood of the Tarquins. This
injustice was perpetrated with the approval, or at least connivance,
of the people, who had themselves raised to the consular office both
Collatinus and Brutus. Another instance of this equity and virtue is
found in their treatment of Marcus Camillus. This eminent man,
after he had rapidly conquered the Veians, at that time the most
formidable of Rome's enemies, and who had maintained a ten years'
war, in which the Roman army had suffered the usual calamities
attendant on bad generalship, after he had restored security to Rome,
which had begun to tremble for its safety, and after he had taken the
wealthiest city of the enemy, had charges brought against him by the
malice of those that envied his success, and by the insolence of the
tribunes of the people; and seeing that the city bore him no gratitude
for preserving it, and that he would certainly be condemned, he went
into exile, and even in his absence was fined 10,000 asses.
Shortly after, however, his ungrateful country had again to seek his
protection from the Gauls. But I cannot now mention all the shameful
and iniquitous acts with which Rome was agitated, when the aristocracy
attempted to subject the people, and the people resented their
encroachments, and the advocates of either party were actuated rather
by the love of victory than by any equitable or virtuous consideration.
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