Sabine

The Sabines (Latin Sabini, singular Sabinus) were an Italic tribe that lived in the central Appennines of ancient Italy, inhabiting also Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. Their language belonged to the Osco-Umbrian subgroup (formerly Sabellic) of Italic languages and contains some words shared with Oscan and Umbrian as well as with Latin.

Tradition suggests that the population of the early Roman kingdom was the result of a union of Sabines and others. Some of the gentes of the Roman republic were proud of their Sabine heritage, such as the Claudia gens, assuming Sabinus as a cognomen or agnomen. Some specifically Sabine deities and cults were known at Rome: Semo Sancus and Quirinus, and at least one area of the town, the Quirinale, where the temples to those latter deities were located, had once been a Sabine center. The extravagent claims of Varro and Cicero that augury, divination by dreams and the worship of Minerva and Mars originated with the Sabines are disputable, as they were general Italic and Latin customs, as well as Etruscan, despite the fact that they were espoused by Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome and a Sabine.

Latin-speakers called the Sabines' original territory, straddling the modern regions of Lazio, Umbria, and Abruzzo, Sabinium. , it bears the ancient tribe's name in the Italian form of Sabina. Within the modern region of Lazio (or Latium), Sabina constitutes a sub-region, situated north-east of Rome, around Rieti.

Language
Sabine is only known from approximately 50 words cited by Varro, Festus and a few others as being of the Sabine language (lingua Sabina). Being a Sabine and a famous scholar Varro has some credibility. Some of his Sabine vocabulary are identical to Latin words; others are not, and yet Varro prefers to write in Latin and gives Latinized forms of names. Smith questions the degree to which the hypothetical lingua Sabina was independent from Latin in Varro's time. The tradition that the Sabines spoke their own language prior to that time is universally accepted.

Traditions
According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, many Roman historians (including Porcius Cato and Gaius Sempronius) regarded the origins of the Romans (descendants of the Aborigines) as Greek despite the fact that their knowledge was derived from Greek legendary accounts. The Sabines, specifically, were first mentioned in Dionysius's account for having captured the city of Lista by surprise, which was regarded as the mother-city of the Aborigines. There was still debate among ancient historians pertaining to the specific origins of the Sabines. Zenodotus of Troezen claimed that the Sabines were originally Umbrians that changed their name after being driven from the Reatine territory by the Pelasgians. However, Porcius Cato argued that the Sabines were a populace named after Sabus, the son of Sancus (a divinity of the area sometimes called Jupiter Fidius). In another account mentioned in Dionysius's work, a group of Lacedaemonians fled Sparta since they regarded the laws of Lycurgus as too severe. In Italy, they founded the Spartan colony of Foronia (near the Pomentine plains) and some from that colony settled among the Sabines. According to the account, the Sabine habits of belligerence and frugality were known to have been derived from the Spartans.

The legend of the Sabine women
Legend says that the Romans abducted Sabine women to populate the newly built Rome. The resultant war ended only by the women throwing themselves and their children between the armies of their fathers and their husbands. The Rape of the Sabine Women ("rape" in this context meaning "kidnapping" rather than its modern meaning, see raptio) became a common motif in art; the women ending the war forms a less frequent but still reappearing motif.

According to Livy, after the conflict the Sabine and Rome states merged, and the Sabine king Titus Tatius jointly ruled Rome with Romulus until Tatius' death five years later. Three new centuries of Equites were introduced at Rome, including one named Tatienses, after the Sabine king.

War with Tullius Hostilius
In the 7th century BC, during the reign of Rome's third king Tullus Hostilius, the Sabines and the Romans again went to war. The pretexts for the war were, on the Roman side, that a number of Roman merchants had been seized by the Sabines at a market near the temple of Feronia, and on the Sabine side, that some of the Sabines were being detained at Rome. The Sabines sought and obtained the assistance of some volunteers from Veii, although the government of Veii did not come to their aid, holding faith to the peace treaty previously made with Romulus.

Tullus invaded Sabine territory and met the Sabines at the forest called Malitiosa. The Roman force was superior in both infantry and cavalry. In particular, the Roman cavalry had recently been augmented by the addition of ten new turmae of equites from amongst the Albans who now dwelt in Rome. The Romans were victorious in battle after a cavalry charge threw the Sabines into disarray. The Sabines suffered heavy losses during the retreat.

War with the early republic
The fall of the Roman monarchy left the Sabines in an ambiguous position politically with regard to Rome. Their treaties had been with the kings, but now the kings were gone. Into this gap stepped Sextus Tarquinius (unless previously assassinated at Gabii), whose rape of Lucretia had been the event that triggered the revolution. He convinced the Sabines that they ought to help restore the kings. They moved against the Romans under native command and were quickly defeated.

Sextus (or Superbus himself) arguing that the Sabine army was mismanaged now brought Fidenae and Cameria to the assistance of the Sabines, who were so impressed by his confidence, his allies and his analysis that they made him dictator and voted for all-out war on Rome. It was at this point that that Titus Claudius (or Attius Clausus) removed all of his relatives and clients to Rome, including approximately 500 fighting men. The Romans settled them in Rome, ennobled Claudius and promised them land beyond the Anio river in the vicinity of Fidenae. All they had to do was take it from the Fidenates.

The Sabines marched toward Rome and were stopped by the river Anio and presumably the consular troops south of it. They placed two camps, one near Fidenae and one in it. Of the consuls for the year, Publius Valerius Poplicola, camped near the Sabines in the open, while Titus Lucretius Tricipitinus camped on a hill near Fidenae. The consular year was 505/504 BC.

Tarquin's plan was to launch a night attack on the camp of Valerius, filling in the ditch and scaling the wall. The troops in Fidenae were to exit the city and cover these operations against a possible attack by Lucretius. However, a Sabine defector and prisoners brought in by a Roman cavalry patrol informed Valerius of the enemy plan. Lucretius was soon advised.

The attack came after midnight. The Sabines were allowed to fill the ditch and throw up brushwood ramps over the wall into a camp that seemed all too still. In hindsight Tarquin might have guessed the danger from the lack of opposition to his inadvertently noisy operations and the total deficit of sentinels. He took those circumstances to mean that the Romans were all sound asleep, a striking underestimation of his enemy.

The Roman maniples were in fact in formation and waiting in the intervallum around the inner perimeter of the castra, invisible in the total blackness. They could see enough to quietly kill all enemies who came over the wall. The moon suddenly rising, the Roman troops and the piles of slain were visible to the Sabines, whose reaction was to drop their weapons and run. As the ambush was no longer a surprise the Roman troops all shouted together, which was the prearranged signal to Lucretius's men on the hill. He sent out his cavalry, which drove the distracted Fidenates from their ambush. They were massacred by Lucretius' infantry coming up. The Sabine army dissolved into a rout of unarmed individuals. Of them 13500 were slain and 4200 taken captive. The battle was not over. Fidenae remained to be taken (see under Roman-Etruscan Wars).

Notable Sabines

 * Titus Tatius, legendary King of the Sabines
 * Numa Pompilius, legendary King of Rome
 * Ancus Marcius, legendary King of Rome
 * Quintus Sertorius, republican general
 * Attius Clausus, founder of the Claudia gens
 * Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Roman writer
 * Marcus Terentius Varro, Roman scholar

Ancient

 * Ovid, Fasti (Book III, 167–258)
 * Ovid, Ars Amatoria (Book I, 102)
 * Livy, Ab Urbe Condita (Book I, 9–14)
 * Cicero, De Republica (Book II, 12–14)
 * Plutarch, Parallel Lives (Romulus, 14–20)
 * Juvenal, Satires (Book III, 81–85)

Modern


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