perpetrated in Rome's palmiest days._
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."[107] 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 neighbouring
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.