The Sabines

In The Sabines: People of Early Rome, Elliot Rowan explores the history of one of ancient Italy's most influential yet elusive peoples. From their communities in the central Apennines and the Tiber Valley to their encounters with the growing settlement of Rome, the Sabines occupied a crucial position in the world of early Italy. Farmers, pastoralists, warriors, and traders, they developed distinctive traditions while maintaining close connections with the Latins, Etruscans, and other neighboring peoples.

Drawing on archaeology and the surviving accounts of Livy, Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and other ancient sources, Rowan reconstructs a people whose own written records have largely disappeared. He examines Sabine society and religion, the famous tradition of the Sabine women, the shared kingship of Titus Tatius and Romulus, the legacy of Numa Pompilius, and the gradual incorporation of independent Sabine communities into the expanding Roman Republic, separating later legend from what can be recovered through historical and archaeological evidence.

More than the story of one of Rome's early neighbors, this book reveals how deeply the Sabines contributed to the civilization that eventually absorbed them. Their religious customs, political traditions, prominent families, and cultural influence became woven into Roman life so completely that the boundaries between Sabine and Roman gradually disappeared. The Sabines ultimately lost their separate political identity, but their legacy endured within the institutions, beliefs, and traditions of a civilization they had helped create.