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Summary Of Titus Livius The History Of Rome

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In Titus Livius’ The History of Rome, Book 1, he tells the story of the rape of the Sabine women. Though he is a historian, I do not feel that he well represents the true emotion and feeling of the women, as is common for the time period. Throughout the telling, Livy fails to discuss the emotions of the women and does not give an accurate representation of what happened to the captured Sabine women once they were taken by the Roman men. His word choice is purposefully vague and nondescript to make the tale more appealing to men of the time. In chapter nine of The History of Rome, Book 1, Livy writes the beginning of the tale: how Romulus needed women to keep his new city alive and was rejected by all of the families he approached. This leads Romulus …show more content…

In the first chapter he writes his own version of the tale, showing the true emotions of the captured women:
As doves flee the eagle in a frightened crowd, as the new-born lamb runs from the hostile wolf: so they fled in panic from the lawless men, and not one showed the color she had before. (Ovid 1.117-20)
In this passage, Ovid displays the panic and fear that comes with being taken away from your family which is missing in Livy’s version of the story. Rather than using Livy’s style of minimal description, Ovid uses similes to show the emotion felt by the Sabines in their situation. From there, he continues to show the violence that is enacted upon the Sabines with the line “The captive girls were led away as plunder for the marriage bed” (Ovid 1.125). From that line, the reader instantly knows that each woman is being raped rather than slept with, as Livy’s version seems to say.
Although Rome in seventh century BC was a much different time than the present, I feel that Livy, as a historian, should have written the tale from a more realistic and accurate perspective. Because his telling was not detailed, the story is easy to

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