XVIII
THE PEACE OF THE WOMEN
It is not to be understood that all the people on the Square Hill approved of the capture of the Sabine girls. It did not seem to them, of course, as it would to the society of to-day, because they considered that a girl ought to marry, in any case, as her elders thought best that she should. But Tullius the priest, and three or four of the other older men, were very doubtful about the wisdom of angering the Sabine men by such a proceeding. Naso and his brother objected to the capture because they had never heard of such a thing. They were men whose minds never took kindly to any sort of new idea. When they made their great move and left their old home, they seemed to have exhausted all the ability to change that they had. They held to every old custom they had ever heard of, as a limpet holds to a rock. But the thing was done, and there was nothing they could [pg 209]do now except to prophesy that it could not possibly turn out well.
The women of the colony were curious to know how far the Sabine marriage customs were like their own, and whether the wedding would mean to these girls what it would to a Roman wife. Marcia asked her husband about it on the night of the festival, when the confusion had quieted somewhat. The watch-fires of the Sabines could be seen far away on the plain, and in the stronghold on the Capitoline Hill the sentinels were keeping watch against any sudden attack.
“Ruffo says,” answered Mamurius, “that they have the same customs as ours, in the main. The girls are taking it very quietly. I think they stopped being frightened when they found they were to be in the care of your mother and the other matrons in the guest house. You know Romulus has ordered that no maiden shall be married against her will. If she remains here until after the Saturnalia without making any choice, she shall be sent back in all honor to her own people. There are none among the girls who are betrothed to men of their villages.”
Marcia was glad to hear that. During the following days she and the other young matrons of the colony visited the captive girls and took care that they lacked nothing in clothing and [pg 210]little comforts. The matrons and the older men had stood firm in insisting that all possible respect should be shown these maidens, just as if they were daughters of the colony. If they were to defend the soldiers’ action as a necessary and wise measure and not a mere savage raid, this was necessary. Otherwise the Sabine men would have a right to feel that they could revenge themselves by carrying off Roman women as slaves, and nobody would be safe. It was much better to delay the weddings for a few days, see what the mountain people were going to do, and give the girls a chance to become a little accustomed to their new surroundings. Naso and some of the other men thought Romulus had gone rather far in promising that the girls should be sent home if they wished to go after a certain time, but he would not move an inch from that position. He had his reasons.
After two or three days the scouts came in to report that the Sabines had gone back to their villages to gather their forces. It would take time to do this, and meanwhile the wedding preparations went forward.
The town on the Square Hill was larger and finer than any of the mountain villages, and after the first shock and fright of their capture passed, many of the girls began to think that what had [pg 211]happened was not so bad, after all. They all knew something about Romulus and his mountain troop, and many of his soldiers had been in the villages at one time and another on some errand. Apparently these half-outlawed fighters had become great men in the new settlement. They had a quarter of their own, in which they had built houses for their brides, shaded by some of the forest trees that were left when the land was cleared, and furnished with many things not known in the mountain villages. It was also true, and Romulus had known all along that it was, that many of his men had known something of the Sabine maidens, and would have married in the villages before, if they could. Considering that the elders of the villages would never have consented to such a thing, this was the only way it could possibly be brought about. It had seemed to him better to make it a sort of state affair than to encourage among the soldiers the idea that they could individually raid the villages and carry off the wives they chose without any religious authority at all. Romulus heard a great many confidential secrets from his men, one by one, that would have surprised those who did not know them. He believed that if it could be managed so that they could settle down in the quarter which was their own, and have homes of [pg 212]their own, they would be as good citizens as any in Rome. But he did not waste time in trying, by argument, to make Tullius and Naso and the other colonists believe this.
The public square was swept and made clean, and the walls of all the houses hung with garlands. The Roman matrons, old and young, had taken from their thrifty stores of home-woven linen and wool, robes and veils and mantles for the strangers, and provided the wedding feast with as much care as if each one of them had a daughter who was going to be married. In fact, according to Roman faith and law, these girls were daughters of Rome as soon as they became wives of Roman men, and had as much right in all public worship and festivals as if they had been born on the Palatine Hill. Since they could not be given away by their own fathers, it had been decided that they should be treated as daughters of the city, and the ten original fathers of the colony should be as their fathers.
The procession came out into the square a little after daybreak, and here the wedding feast was set forth. The maidens were veiled and dressed in white, and attended by the young Roman girls as bridesmaids, and the soldiers were drawn up in military order. The feasting and singing and dancing went on in the usual way, and toward [pg 213]the end of the day the procession formed again and went down the slope toward the huts of the soldiers. At the door of each hut the man to whom it belonged claimed his bride; she lighted the hearth fire, and poured out the libation, and ate of the bride cake with her husband. It was a strange wedding day, but it seemed to have ended happily, after all.