100 



pieces by the Senators, who carried away under their cloaks the mang- 

 led fragments of his body, and gave out to the credulous populace, that 

 he had been carried up to heaven. Nothing was easier for such writers 

 than to remove the objection to the story of the Rape, which lay in the 

 shortness of the period intervening between it and the foundation of 

 Rome. Instead of four months, they made it to be so many years.* 

 The rejected statement, they thought, was attributable to a slight 

 mistake. This being removed, the whole story became highly probable, 

 and a portion of genuine and authentic history. We make bold to think 

 differently. This arbitiury meddling with the tradition seems to us to 

 prove that the tradition itself was neither very old nor generally credited. 



We shall arrive at the same result by examining another statement, 

 viz. that referring to the number of women carried oif on the occasion. 

 Here again we meet with a variety of opinions. According to the oldest 

 form of the tradition, the number was not greater than thirty,! and from 

 these the names of the thirty Curies are said to have been taken. This 

 number betrays the legendary character of the tradition, for the numbers 

 B, 30, 300, frequently occur in the legends of ancient Rome. Thus 

 three years elapsed between the landing of ^neas in Latium and his 

 death ; thirty years between the foundation of Lavinium by ^neas's son, 

 Ascanius, and that of Alba Longa ; three hundred years between that of 

 Alba Longa and Rome. The league of the Latins numbered thirty cities; 

 Rome consisted of three patrician tribes and thirty curies ; the three 

 Horatii and the three Curiatii decided the struggle between Rome and 

 Alba Longa; three Sibylline books were purchased by Tarquin, but three 

 times three had been offered for sale. More instances might be enume- 

 rated to show, that thirty is a sacred number in the legends of Rome, 

 and that, where it is prominent in a story, there is a natural presumption, 

 that this story is not historical but fabulous. 



But besides the sacred character of the number 30, there is another 

 objection to its appealing historical. It is evidently too small. Why, 

 so the rationalistic historian would argue, it would hardly have been 

 worth while for Romulus and his Romans to incur the chances of a 

 dangerous war for so slight an advantage. What were thirty women 

 among a large population of men? Even the sensible Livy seems to 

 feel the weight of such objections. He says, that " no doubt a much 

 greater number was carried off," but he cannot tell " how many, nor by 

 what principle the Romans were guided in selecting the thirty, after 

 whom they named the thirty Curies of the state, whether by their age, 

 the rank of those who became their husbands, or by lot." From this 



• Diouys. II. 31. 

 + Niebuhr Rom. Hist., Vol. I., page of uote 680. 



