VI.  The crimes of Theseus in carrying off women are without any decent excuse; first, because he did it so often, for he carried off Ariadne and Antiope and Anaxo of Troezen, and above all when he was an old man he carried off Helen, when she was not yet grown up, and a mere child, though he was past the age for even legitimate marriage.  Besides, there was no reason for it, for these Troezenian, Laconian, and Amazonian maidens, besides their not being betrothed to him, were no worthier mothers for his children than the Athenian daughters of Erechtheus and Kekrops would have been, so we must suspect that these acts were done out of mere riotous wantonness.

Now Romulus, though he carried off nearly eight hundred women, yet kept only one, Hersilia, for himself, and distributed the others among the unmarried citizens; and afterwards, by the respect, love, and justice with which he treated them, proved that his wrongful violence was the most admirable and politic contrivance for effecting the union of the two nations.  By means of it he welded them into one, and made it the starting-point of harmony at home and strength abroad.  The dignity, love, and permanence with which he invested the institution of marriage is proved by the fact that during two hundred and thirty years no man separated from his wife or woman from her husband; but, just as in Greece, very exact persons can mention the first instance of parricide or matricide, so all the Romans know that Spurius Carvilius was the first who put away his wife, upon a charge of barrenness.  Events also testify to the superior wisdom of Romulus, for, in consequence of that intermarriage, the two kings and the two races shared the empire, whereas, from the marriage of Theseus, the Athenians obtained no alliance or intercourse with any nation, but only hatreds and wars and deaths of citizens and at last the destruction of Aphidnae, and they themselves escaped from the fate which Paris brought upon Troy, only by the mercy of their enemies and their own entreaties and supplications.  The mother of Theseus, not nearly but quite, suffered the fate of Hekuba, who was abandoned and given up by her son, unless the story of her captivity is false, as I hope it is, together with much of the rest.

Also the religious part of their histories makes a great distinction between them.  For Romulus’s success was due to the great favour of Heaven, whereas the oracle given to Aegeus, to refrain from all women in foreign parts, seems to argue that the birth of Theseus took place contrary to the will of the gods.

LIFE OF LYKURGUS.