I’ve been reading about an event that occurred during the founding of the city of Rome. Apparently, 8th C BC Rome was primarily male, populated by the soldiers and mercenaries who secured the region from the various tribes in the area. The story goes that in order to grow the population Romulus concocted a plan to lure the tribal Sabines to the city, killed the men and raped the women who then became the mothers of the next generation of Roman citizens.
The reason the event was not forgotten over time was because quite a number of artists found the imagined scene compelling. From the Baroque to Cubism, Rubens to Picasso artists depicted the chaotic scene. None of them imagined an alternative ‘rest of the story’ I guess.
