Still, it was safe, they thought, to attend a
fair under the protection of religion, and so they went,--they and
their wives and their daughters.
At a signal from Romulus, when the games were at the most exciting
stage, and the strangers were scattered about among the Romans, each
follower of Romulus siezed the maiden that he had selected, and carried
her off. It is said that as the men made the siezure, they cried out,
"Talasia!" which means spinning, and that at all marriages in Rome
afterwards, that word formed the refrain of a song, sung as the bride
was approaching her husband's house. We cannot imagine the disturbance
with which the festival broke up, as the distracted strangers found out
that they were the victims of a trick, and that their loved daughters
had been taken from them. They called in vain upon the god in whose
honor they had come, and they listened with suppressed threats of
vengeance to Romulus, as he boldly went about among them telling them
that it was owing to their pride that this calamity had fallen upon
them, but that all would now be well with their daughters. Each new
husband would, he said, be the better guardian of his bride, because he
would have to take the place with her of family and home as well as of
husband.
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