Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/493

 'CHaP. II. THE ROMAN CONQUEST. 487 have been celebrated accovding to the rites, since the first and most necessary act of the marriage was the traditio in manum^ — that is to say, the giving away of the daughter by the father; Romulus would have failed of his object. But the presence of the Sabines and their families at the religious ceremony, and their participation in the sacrifice, established between the two nations a bond such that the connubium could no longer be refused. There was no need of a seizure ; the right of intermarriage was a natural consequence of the festival. And the historian Dionysius, who con- sulted ancient documents and hymns, assures us that the Sabines were married according to the most solemn rites, which is confirmed by Plutarch and Cicero. It is worthy of remark that the result of the first efibrt of the Romans was to throw down the barriers which the municipal religion had placed between two neigh- boring nations. No similar lecrend relative to Etruria has come down to us, but it appears quite certain that Rome had the same relations with that country as with Latium and the Sabines. The Romans therefore had the address to unite themselves, by worship and by blood, with all the nations around them. They took care to have the connubium i all the cities; and what proves that they well understood the im- portance of this bond is, that they would not permit other cities, their subjects, to have it among them- selves.' Rome then entered upon the long series of its wars. The first was against the Sabines of Tatius; it was ter- minated by a religious and political alliance between •these two little nations. It next made war upon Alba. ' Livy, IX. 43; XXIII. 4.