10-^ 



customs do uot originate in historical events, but are the natural and 

 gradual produce of a nation s civilisation and mode of life, of the 

 geographical and climatic influences under which a people lives, and 

 that tales are invented to account for their origin, Just as striking 

 natui*al features of a country are ascribed to the miraculous agency of 

 giants and heroes. This genei*al law applies to the popular traditions of 

 all nations. Where there is an isolated rock on a plain or on a coast, it 

 has been dropped by some giant of old. The pillars of Hercules were 

 planted by the hero who rent Africa and Europe asunder. All the 

 constellations of the heavens were referred by the imagination of the 

 Greeks to some god or hero. Every worship, every festival, had its 

 myth which recounted its origin. The first establishment of civil 

 government, of social order, of marriage, was referred to a specific 

 author, and related in an appropriate myth or legend. 



Such a legend, in my opinion, is the story of the Rape of the Sabines. 

 It was first intended to explain the peculiar ceremonies which accom- 

 panied a Roman wedding. The Roman maid was carried off by her 

 bridegroom with simulated violence.^ Three youths led her from her 

 parents' house to that of her intended husband ; she was carried over 

 the threshold ; her hair was divided with the point of a spear, as a 

 token that she was won in war, for all the spoils of war came under the 

 spear (sub hastaj, and a spear was erected over the prisoners of war sold 

 into slavery. " Under compulsion, and with sadness, did the Roman 

 maidens marry," says Varro.f For this reason a wedding could not 

 take place at Rome on a festival of one of the celestial gods, because 

 violence, mourning, and lamentation were as hateful to them as they 

 were acceptable to the gods below. | 



These ceremonies, pointing to force and violence, were not peculiar 

 to the Romans. They are very natural in a rude and warlike people. 

 We consequently find them again among the Spartans ;§ and it is as 

 imlikely that there they were introduced in consequence of a single 

 occurrence as this was the case in Rome. On the contrary, such an 

 occurrence was invented in order to account for the ceremonies. 

 Romulus, the founder of the city, the father of the Roman nation, was 

 very appropriately represented also as the author of the Roman mar- 

 riage, with all its ceremonies, with its rights and duties. He is there- 

 fore related as having taken his wife also from among the Sabine 

 virgins. The Roman mamage, in its strictest and most solemn fonn, 

 was essentially Sabine ; so was the " Patria potestas," a paternal autho- 



* Festus, 8. V. rapi. 

 + Plutarch, QusBst. Rom., 105. i Hariuiig, Relig. d. Roemer, II. 88. 



S Plutarch, Lycurg. 15. MuUer, Dociuns II. 282. 



