Romulus

But perhaps it was necessary, now that many slaves and fugitives gathered about them. either to disperse these and have no following at all, or else to dwell apart with them. For that the residents of Alba would not consent to give the fugitives the privilege of intermarriage with them, nor even receive them as fellow-citizens, is clear, in the first place, from the rape of the Sabine women,[*](See chapter xiv.) which was not a deed of wanton daring, but one of necessity, owing to the lack of marriages by consent; for they certainly honoured the women, when they had carried them off, beyond measure.

And in the second place, when their city was first founded, they made a sanctuary of refuge for all fugitives,[*](Cf. Livy, i. 8, 5 f.) which they called the sanctuary of the God of Asylum. There they received all who came, delivering none up, neither slave to masters, nor debtor to creditors, nor murderer to magistrates, but declaring it to be in obedience to an oracle from Delphi that they made the asylum secure for all men. Therefore the city was soon full of people, for they say that the first houses numbered no more than a thousand. This, however, was later.