At the moment I’m listening to an audio course on Roman history (which I will review soon), and as I go through it, it’s bringing to mind all kind of incidents I remember that involve Roman history. One of them occurred just last year.
I was in an art museum with a family of friends, and we were looking at a room of sixteenth to eighteenth century paintings, most of which dealt with biblical or mythological themes. I was studying a picture at my eye-level (Daniel in the Lion’s Den or something like that), when the tiny voice of the family’s youngest daughter rose to my ears.
“Where are they taking those women . . . ?” she asked.
I bent to look at the painting at her eye level and saw that it was a painting of men hefting women on their shoulders and carrying them off (much like the one I’ve reproduced here, which is of the same event).
I looked at the card next to it to see what it was titled. “THE RAPE OF THE SABINES,” the card said.
My mind reeled for a second as to what to tell the child.
“To have fun,” I said.
“Oh,” she replied, contentendly.
Actually, as the Roman history course I’m listening to now points out, the “rape” of the Sabines wasn’t really a rape. It was actually “kidnapping with intent to marry,” but it still left me wondering what kind of weirdo would hang a painting of the event at the eye-level of a six year old child. That’s one of those practical organizational rules like “Don’t put the horses at the front of the parade.”
(FYI, if you’re not a student of Roman history, you may have heard of the abduction of the Sabine women from the goofy musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where it is recounted in the goofy song “Oh Those Sobbin’, Sobbin’ Women.” Sobbin’ = Sabine. Get it?)
