renew the fight." The Romans halted as if ordered by a voice from
heaven. Romulus himself hastened to the front. Mettius Curtius, on the
side of the Sabines, had rushed down from the citadel at the head of
his troops and driven the Romans in disordered array over the whole
space of ground where the Forum now is. He had almost reached the
gate of the Palatium, crying out: "We have conquered our perfidious
friends, our cowardly foes: now they know that fighting with men is a
very different thing from ravishing maidens." Upon him, as he uttered
these boasts, Romulus made an attack with a band of his bravest
youths. Mettius then happened to be fighting on horseback: on that
account his repulse was easier. When he was driven back, the Romans
followed in pursuit: and the remainder of the Roman army, fired by the
bravery of the king, routed the Sabines. Mettius, his horse taking
fright at the noise of his pursuers, rode headlong into a morass: this
circumstance drew off the attention of the Sabines also at the danger
of so high a personage. He indeed, his own party beckoning and calling
to him, gaining heart from the encouraging shouts of many of his
friends, made good his escape. The Romans and Sabines renewed the
battle in the valley between the two hills: but the advantage rested
with the Romans.

At this crisis the Sabine women, from the outrage on whom the war had
arisen, with dishevelled hair and torn garments, the timidity natural
to women being overcome by the sense of their calamities, were
emboldened to fling themselves into the midst of the flying weapons,
and, rushing across, to part the incensed combatants and assuage their
wrath: imploring their fathers on the one hand and their husbands
on the other, as fathers-in-law and sons-in-law, not to besprinkle
themselves with impious blood, nor to fix the stain of murder on their
offspring, the one side on their grandchildren, the other on their