Return to Barbarians, Captives, and Enemies (to this coin) See also Tarpeia Reverse (another Titurius Sabinus Denarius)
Roman Republican. L. Titurius L.f. Sabinus AR Denarius (19mm, 3.89 g, 6 h), Rome 89 BCE.
Obv: SABIN. Bare-headed and bearded head of King Titus Tatius to right; in field to right, TA monogram.
Rev: L•TITVRI. Rape of the Sabine women.
Ref: Babelon (Tituria) 1; Crawford 344/1a.
Prov: Ex J.P. Righetti Collection, w/ his tag (Leu WA 20 [16 Jul 2022], 2263) & J.M.A.L. Collection (formed 1970-2000) (Chaponnière & Firmenich 13 [16 May 2021], 254 [part]).
[If JMAL sees this & wishes to share more about the provenance & the collection, I would love to hear!]
(Video & enlarged image on Imgur)
Notes: It is often emphasized that the “Rape of the Sabines,” one of Rome’s founding myths, refers to “rape” in an older sense of the word, meaning “abduction.” Nonetheless, the purpose of the abduction was to compel marriage and reproduction. Even if the Sabine women (at least some) eventually accepted the marriages in Livy’s version, it is difficult to remove the modern reading of “sexual assault” from the myth.
It is quite revealing that Romans publicly took great pride in the myth of their founding fathers kidnapping and forcing the mothers of the first Romans into relationships we’d call slavery today. Two thousand years ago, though, such coercive social relations were far less objectionable (at least to those in power).
Instead, the Romans read it as a myth about their own fundamental nature, their Imperialistic tendencies, inherited from their ancestors: Take what you need by force, dominate your neighbors, absorb and make them “ours,” then do the same thing to the next neighbor….