since, evidently thought that all was fair in love and war, and, after
failing in all his efforts to lead the neighboring peoples to allow the
Roman men to marry their women, he gave it out that he had discovered
the altar of the god Consus, who presided over secret deliberations,--a
very suitable divinity to come up at the juncture,--and that he
intended to celebrate his feast.

Consus was honored on the twenty-first of August, and this celebration
would come, therefore, just four months after the foundation of the
city. There were horse and chariot races, and libations which were
poured into the flames that consumed the sacrifices. The people of the
country around Rome were invited to take part in the novel festivities,
and they were nothing loth to come, for they had considerable curiosity
to see what sort of a city had so quickly grown up on the Palatine
Hill. They felt no solicitude, though perhaps some might have thought
of the haughtiness with which they had refused the offers of matrimony
made to their maidens. Still, it was safe, they thought, to attend a
fair under the protection of religion, and so they went,--they and
their wives and their daughters.

At a signal from Romulus, when the games were at the most exciting
stage, and the strangers were scattered about among the Romans, each
follower of Romulus siezed the maiden that he had selected, and carried
her off. It is said that as the men made the siezure, they cried out,
"Talasia!" which means spinning, and that at all marriages in Rome
afterwards, that word formed the refrain of a song, sung as the bride
was approaching her husband's house. We cannot imagine the disturbance
with which the festival broke up, as the distracted strangers found out
that they were the victims of a trick, and that their loved daughters
had been taken from them. They called in vain upon the god in whose