treachery though willing to profit by it. Her name was fixed upon the
steep rock of the Capitoline Hill from which traitors were in after
years thrown.

We now have the Sabines on one hill and the Romans on another, with a
swampy plain of small extent between them, where the forum was
afterward built. The Romans wished to retake the Capitoline Hill (which
was also called the Hill of Saturn), and a battle was fought the next
day in the valley. It is said that two men began the fight, Mettus
Curtius, representing the Sabines, and Hostus Hostilius, the Romans,
and that though the Roman was killed, Curtius was chased into the
swamp, where his horse was mired, and all his efforts with whip and
spur to get him out proving ineffectual, he left the faithful beast and
saved himself with difficulty. The swamp was ever after known as
_Lacus Curtius_, and this story might be taken as the true origin
of its name (for _lacus_ in Latin meant a marsh as well as a
lake), if it were not that there are two other accounts of the reason
for it. One story is that in the year 362 B.C.--that is, some four
centuries after the battle we have just related, the earth in the forum
gave way, and all efforts to fill it proving unsuccessful, the oracles
were appealed to. They replied that the spot could not be made firm
until that on which Rome's greatness was based had been cast into the
chasm, but that then the state would prosper. In the midst of the
doubting that followed this announcement, the gallant youth, Curtius,
came forward, declaring that the city had no greater treasure than a
brave citizen in arms, upon which he immediately leaped into the abyss
with his horse. Thereupon the earth closed over the sacrifice. This is
the story that Livy prefers. The third is simply to the effect that
while one Curtius was consul, in the year 445 B.C., the earth at the
spot was struck by lightning, and was afterwards ceremoniously enclosed