- Titus Tatius
The traditions of
ancient Rome held that Titus Tatius (d.748 BC ) was theSabine king ofCures , who, after the rape of the Sabine women, attackedRome and captured the Capitol with the treachery ofTarpeia . The Sabine women, however, convinced Tatius and Romulus to reconcile and subsequently they ruled jointly over the Romans and Sabines. Rome was to retain its name and each citizen was to be called a Roman, but as a community they were to be calledQuirites ; the Sabines were to be incorporated in the state and admitted into the tribes and curies. After this arrangement had lasted for five years it came to an end by the death of Tatius, who was killed out of revenge by the inhabitants ofLavinium , leaving Romulus to rule alone, and Tatius is thus not counted as one of the traditional "Seven Kings of Rome".According to
Mommsen , the story of his death, (for which seePlutarch ) looks like an historical version of the abolition of blood-revenge. Tatius, who in some respects resemblesRemus , is not an historical personage, but the eponymous hero of the religious college called Sodales Titii. As to this bodyTacitus expresses two different opinions, representing two different traditions: that it was introduced either by Tatius himself to preserve the Sabine cult in Rome; or by Romulus in honour of Tatius, at whose grave its members were bound to offer a yearly sacrifice. The sedates fell into abeyance at the end of the republic, but were revived byAugustus and existed to the end of the 2nd century A.D. Augustus himself and the emperorClaudius belonged to the college, and all its members were of senatorial rank. Varro mentions him as a king of Rome who enlarged the city and established certaincult s, but he may just have been theeponym of the tribe Titiae, or even an invention to serve as a precedent for collegial magistracy. He had one daughter Tatia, who marriedNuma Pompilius , and one son, who was the ancestor of the noble family of Tatii.ources
*
Livy i. 10-14.
*Tacitus , "Annals", i. 54, "Histories" ii. 95.
*Dionysius of Halicarnassus , ii. 36-52.
*Plutarch , "Romulus", 19-24.
*Joachim Marquardt , "Romische Staatsverwaltung" (1885) iii. 446.
*Schwegler , "Romische Geschichte", bk. ix. 3, 14; x. 5.
*1911
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