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from her home by force. Such a custom still exists among the nomad tribes of Asia Minor. The rape of the Sabine women was invented to account for this custom.]
[Footnote 10: The spolia opima (grand spoils)--a term used to denote the arms taken by one general from another--were only gained twice afterward during the history of the republic; in B.C. 437, when A. Cornelius Cossus slew Lars Tolumnius of Veii; and in B.C. 222, when the consul M. Claudius Marcellus slew Viridomarus, chief of the Insubrian Gauls.]
[Footnote 11: The place afterward retained its name, even when filled up and dry. Livy (Book VII) gives a different reason for the name: that it was so called from one Marcus Curtius having sprung, armed, and on horseback, several hundred years ago (B.C. 362), into a gulf that suddenly opened in the forum; it being imagined that it would not close until an offering was made of what was most valuable in the state--i. e., a warrior armed and on horseback. According to Varro, it was a locus fulguritus (i. e., struck by lightning), which was inclosed by a consul named Curtius.]
[Footnote 12: Supposed to be derived from "Lucumo," the name or, according to more accepted commentators, title of an Etruscan chief who came to help Romulus.--D.O.]
[Footnote 13: The inhabitants of Fidenae, about five miles from Rome, situated on the Tiber, near Castel Giubileo.--D.O.]
[Footnote 14: About twelve and a half miles north of Rome, close to the little river Cremera; it was one of the most important of the twelve confederate Etruscan towns. Plutarch describes it as the bulwark of Etruria: not inferior to Rome in military equipment and numbers.]
[Footnote 15: A naïvely circumstantial story characteristically told. Though a republican, it is quite evident that Livy wishes to convey the idea that Romulus, having by the creation of a body-guard aspired to tyrannical power, was assassinated by the senate.--D.O.]
[Footnote 16: The reading in this section is uncertain.]
[Footnote 17: Two interpretations are given of this passage--(1) that out of each decury one senator was chosen by lot to make up the governing body of ten; (2) that each decury as a whole held office in succession, so that one decury was in power for fifty days.]
[Footnote 18: At this time a grove: later it became one of the artificers' quarters, lying beyond the forum and in the jaws of the suburra, which stretched away over the level ground to the foot of the Esquiline and Quirinal Hills.--D.O.]