The Rape of the Sabines

The Rape of the Sabines - Pietro Da Cortona, 1629

In the days when being educated meant you actually knew and understood things rather than just being credentialed everybody with an education would know the meaning of this picture.

I wonder how many do now?

It tells of the early Romans who needed women if what they had built was to persist. Without children their legacy would be nothing.

They asked their neighbours, the Sabines, if they could marry their daughters - the Sabines refused.

So the Romans took the women by force - you can check out the whole story if don't know it and feel inspired.

Whoever heard of the Sabines - where are they now?

But the Romans legacy is huge. Right or wrong doesn't come into it (according to the story the Sabine women preferred to stay with their Roman Husbands anyway). It is what it is.

And that's the point, unless a culture finds a way of reproducing itself and transmitting itself to the next generation, who do the same - it dies.

Our culture is dying, it is in its death throes