The Rape of the Sabines

Author(s): A. E. Wardman
Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 1 (May, 1965), pp. 101-103
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/637855
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 THE RAPE OF THE SABINES
(Ovid, Ars AmatoriaI. 89 ff.)
to the Ars Amatoriathe notorious rape took place on the occasion
ACCORDING
of a primitive dramatic entertainment staged in a theatre, in which the seats
and furnishingswere also primitive. There is no time for a description of the
arts of the performers-a tibicenand a ludius'-before the Romans, impatient
for action, receive their signal from Romulus. Nor is there any mention of a
god in whose honour the entertainment had been provided.
This account differs significantly both from Ovid's brief reference to the
same event in the Fasti (3. 200 ff.), which mentions the god Consus, and
from the versions of other writers. It is the purpose of this note to indicate the
points of difference and to suggest an explanation.
Perhapsthe fullest account of the rape is given in Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
Ant. Rom. 2. 30 ff. According to this the festival instituted by Romulus was
the Consualia, in honour of the god Consus.2Dionysius identifies the god Con-
sus with Poseidon; and gives another explanation according to which the god
honoured was the instigatorof secretconsilia-in this case the plan was Romulus'
intention of taking the Sabine women by force. He says that the festival was
celebrated in his own time by a ceremony at a subterraneanaltar in the Circus
Maximus, when chariot-raceswere staged. The natural place for holding such
an event would be the Circus-and a passage in Cicero (derep.2. 7. I2) states
that the event was indeed held in the Circus by Romulus.3 Livy (I. 9. 6) of
course refers to the rape and says that there were ludos.. . Neptunoequestri
sollemnes,a remark which was presumably followed by Florus4 (i. I. Io), who
speaks of simulatis... ludis equestribus.Similarly much of the tradition is
repeated in Plutarch's Life of Romulus:in a passage which professes to go
back to Fabius Pictor,s Plutarch mentions the god Consus, speaksof an identifi-
cation with Poseidon Hippikos, and describesthe festival as dayjva Kal eav ...
TravrqyvpLK7v.
The main point of difference is clear: the A.A. has a simple dramatic
spectacle, taking place in a theatre,6 whereas other versions either name, or
are compatible with, a horse-race, which would appropriately be held in
the Circus. Greek and Roman scholarship of Ovid's time considered that
I According to Livy 7. 2. 3 the tibicen 5 Romulus 14. For Fabius Pictor see A.
and ludius did not reach Rome till 364 B.c. Piganiol, Les Jeux Romains (I923), pp.
This obscure and difficult chapter mentions 5 ff.
incidentally that the Circus was prior to 6 Cf. also Vergil, Aen. 8. 635-6. The dif-
the dramatic spectacle-nam circi modo ference was already noticed by Brandt; see
spectaculum fuerat. his edition of the A.A., Anhang, p. 209. It is
2 See W. Warde Fowler, The Roman worth noticing that Ovid's stage is made of
Festivals, pp. 206 ff. boughs from the Palatine, the hill near the
3 .. virgines, quae Romam ludorum Circus Maximus, whereas the theatres in
gratia venissent, quos tum primum anniver- Ovid's time were all some distance from the
sarios in circo facere instituisset, Consualibus Palatine. This remark may, therefore, be
rapi iussit.... Cf. Varro, de linguaLatina6.20. a trace of the usual view of the Romulean
4 The
phrase was explicitly borrowed to games, namely that they occurred in the
annotate the Delphin A.A., in spite of the Circus.
fact that the incident occurs in a theatre.
 102 A. E. WARDMAN
Romulus had held a horse-racewhen the Sabines were attacked.' In the Fasti
Ovid does indeed mention the god Consus, an integral part of the horse-race
idea. It is therefore possible that Ovid only came to know the common view
when he composed the Fasti. But it is, I think, more probable that he knew
the tradition when he wrote the A.A., and neverthelessmade a change of scene
for artistic purposes.
Ovid is clearly having some amusement at the expense of the stock idea
of Romulus as the founder of Roman greatness. In the Fasti Romulus appears
as the originator of civil war-
tum primum generis intulit arma socer-
and in the A.A. he initiates the Romans into the uses of dissoluteness. The
same idea is expressed by Propertius (2. 6. 2I f.)-
tu rapere intactas docuisti impune Sabinas.
But Ovid is not merely laughing at the respectable 'first Augustus', and
turning the idea inside out. By making Romulus introduce promiscuity in the
theatre as an original Roman custom, he is also making fun of the 'Puritan'view
of the theatre.2 It is clear that there was a tendency to regard the theatre as a
disastrousGreekimportation,which the Romans of the second century B.c. had
fought to exclude and which did not become permanently settled until 52 B.c.
when Pompey's theatre was built. Some people thought that the theatre itself
was harmful, that seats would entice the mob from productive service, and that
the plague of idleness would disorder the citizens. By attributing Romulus'
assault to the theatre Ovid, in effect, can score off the critics of the theatre by
implying that sexual licence, as a mark of relaxed living, was an original
feature of the Romulean world; it was not therefore imported from the Greek
East with the theatre but had the most distinguished parentage any custom
could possibly need.
Another point behind the change of scene from Circus to theatre turns
on the seating arrangements in both places. In the Circus men and women
were allowed to sit side by side.3 In the A.A. the episode of the rape is followed
by a persuasiveaccount of the opportunitiesavailable to the lover in the Circus,
where the 'law of the place' compels one to sit close to one's neighbour, and
one's neighbour is allowed, again by law, to be a woman. But in the theatre
women appear to have been segregated in the upper part of the auditorium.
This is suggested by the remark in the Amores,2. 7. 4:
sive ego marmorei respexi4summa theatri,
elegis e multis unde dolere velis.
Romulus is said to have instituted belli- to task by Plutarch for passionate ceillades
crepam saltationem, ne simile pateretur, quod in the theatre, even though they led to
fecerat ipse, cum a' ludis Sabinorum virgines marriage. See Plutarch, Sulla 35; the chapter
rapuit. See Paulus, p. 3I, Lindsay. is also useful on the question of separate
2 See esp. Tac. Ann. 14. 20 for criticism seats for different groups.
of Pompey's theatre. There was also criticism 3 See the brilliant description in the A.A.
of the elegant temporary theatres of Scaurus I. 135 ff., an account which is probably based
and Curio: see Pliny N.H. 36. 113. A theatre on Amores 3. 2. For seating in the Circus
was planned in 155 B.C., but was opposed by cf. Juvenal, I 1. 202-quos cultae decet ad-
the eximiacivitatisseveritaset consulScipio(Vel- sedissepuellae. Cf. Ovid, Tristia 2. 284.
leius Paterculus, i. 15. 3). Sulla is taken 4 Cf. Propertius, 4. 8. 77.
 THE RAPE OF THE SABINES I03
a detail of which there is perhaps an echo in the A.A. (I. o19), where the
Romans look back at the Sabines and mark their prey-
respiciunt, oculisque notant sibi quisque puellam.
Suetonius also speaks of Augustus making fresh arrangements for allocating
seats at spectacles as a result of which women were moved to the upper seats
at gladiatorial shows and were entirely excluded from athletic performances.
Only the Vestal Virgins had a place of honour in the theatre, opposite the
praetor's tribunal. Indeed, some modern authorities speak of a Lex lulia
Theatralis,though this appears to be little more than an inference from the
rather confused account in Suetonius.'
The second point, then, is that Ovid is poking fun at the segregation in the
theatre. If Romulus was able to organize a rape in a segregated theatre, the
Romans, who are his descendants, can hardly be blamed for using the theatre
as the preliminary for more sophisticated adventures. Ovid's wit is directed
at two solemn cliches of his own time: the notion that the theatre was a
beastly foreign immorality, and the attempt to keep the sexes apart in it.
By transferring the precedent of the august Romulus from the Circus to
the theatre Ovid makes the theatre seem a place of free association. The
legend might have been wasted in a description of the Circus, where the
greater freedom of the sexes was already an obvious subject for poetic wit.
Universityof Reading A. E. WARDMAN
I Suetonius, Augustus 44 ff. For the so- Studies, p. 5I9. Suetonius, Augustus60, and
called Lex lulia Theatralis see Daremberg- Pliny, N.H. 33. 32, seem to refer to the
Saglio, v. 204, and cf. Companionto Latin equites.