The town on the Palatine may for a long time have been in a state of dependence on the Sabine conqueror whom tradition calls Titus Tatius; hence he was slain during the Laurentine sacrifice, and hence also his memory was hateful.  The existence of a Sabine town on the Quirinal is attested by the undoubted occurrence there of a number of Sabine chapels, which were known as late as the time of Varro, and from which he proved that the Sabine ritual was adopted by the Romans.  This Sabine element in the worship of the Romans has almost always been overlooked, in consequence of the prevailing desire to look upon everything as Etruscan; but, I repeat, there is no doubt of the Sabine settlement, and that it was the result of a great commotion among the tribes of middle Italy.

The tradition that the Sabine women were carried off because there existed no connubium, and that the rape was followed by a war, is undoubtedly a symbolical representation of the relation between the two towns, previous to the establishment of the right of intermarriage; the Sabines had the ascendancy and refused that right, but the Romans gained it by force of arms.  There can be no doubt that the Sabines were originally the ruling people, but that in some insurrection of the Romans various Sabine places, such as Antemnae, Fidenae, and others, were subdued, and thus these Sabines were separated from their kinsmen.  The Romans, therefore, reestablished their independence by a war, the result of which may have been such as we read it in the tradition—­Romulus being, of course, set aside—­namely, that both places as two closely united towns formed a kind of confederacy, each with a senate of one hundred members, a king, an offensive and defensive alliance, and on the understanding that in common deliberations the burghers of each should meet together in the space between the two towns which was afterward called the comitium.  In this manner they formed a united state in regard to foreign nations.

The idea of a double state was not unknown to the ancient writers themselves, although the indications of it are preserved only in scattered passages, especially in the scholiasts.  The head of Janus, which in the earliest times was represented on the Roman as, is the symbol of it, as has been correctly observed by writers on Roman antiquities.  The vacant throne by the side of the curule chair of Romulus points to the time when there was only one king, and represents the equal but quiescent right of the other people.

That concord was not of long duration is an historical fact likewise; nor can it be doubted that the Roman king assumed the supremacy over the Sabines, and that in consequence the two councils were united so as to form one senate under one king, it being agreed that the king should be alternately a Roman and a Sabine, and that each time he should be chosen by the other people:  the king, however, if displeasing to the