Events & Calendars "From Spoils to Saviors: Re-valuing the First Roman Wives as Civic Actors in Livy's 'From the Foundation of the City'"

This talk will focus on the episode traditionally known as “the rape of the Sabine women,” in which the first Romans staved off the extinction of their new community and established Rome’s version of marriage, but did so by obtaining their wives through a mass bride abduction. Unlike most of the women who fall victim to violence in Rome’s founding myths, the Sabine women not only survive their assault; by the end of their story, as told by the Roman historian Livy, they’ve won universal respect and recognition for saving both new and old communities, which they risk their own lives to defend.