eived to have been.
In later times the number was thought too small; it was supposed that
these thirty had been chosen by lot for the purpose of naming the
_curiae_ after them; and Valerius Antias fixed the number of the women
who had been carried off at five hundred and twenty-seven. The rape is
placed in the fourth month of the city, because the _consualia_ fall in
August, and the festival commemorating the foundation of the city in
April; later writers, as Cn. Gellius, extended this period to four
years, and Dionysius found this of course far more credible. From this
rape there arose wars, first with the neighboring towns, which were
defeated one after another, and at last with the Sabines. The ancient
legend contains not a trace of this war having been of long continuance;
but in later times it was necessarily supposed to have lasted for a
considerable time, since matters were then measured by a different
standard. Lucumo and Caelius came to the assistance of Romulus, an
allusion to the expedition of Caeles Vibenna, which however belongs to a
much later period. The Sabine king, Tatius, was induced by treachery to
settle on the hill which is called the Tarpeian _arx_. Between the
Palatine and the Tarpeian rock a battle was fought, in which neither
party gained a decisive victory, until the Sabine women threw themselves
between the combatants, who agreed that henceforth the sovereignty
should be divided between the Romans and the Sabines. According to the
annals, this happened in the fourth year of Rome.

But this arrangement lasted only a short time; Tatius was slain during a
sacrifice at Lavinium, and his vacant throne was not filled up. During
their common reign, each king had a senate of one hundred members, and
the two senates, after consulting separately, used to meet, and this was
called _comitium_. Romulus during the remainder of his life ruled alone;
the ancient legend knows nothing of his having been a tyrant: according
to Ennius he continued, on the contrary, to be a mild and benevolent
king, while Tatius was a tyrant. The ancient tradition contained nothing
beyond the beginning and the end of the reign of Romulus; all that lies
between these points, the war with the Veientines, Fidenates, and so on,
is a foolish invention of later annalists. The poem itself is beautiful,
but this inserted narrative is highly absurd, as for example the
statement that Romulus slew ten thousand Veientines with his own hand.
T