Sabines
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Sabines. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
sa'binz, an ancient people of Italy. They occupied a region, for the most part rugged and mountainous, eastward from the central portion of the River Tiber. They preserved a reputation for simplicity and austerity of manners even in the day of Livy and Cicero. They have been called the Spartans of Italy. According to tradition the young men of Rome on one occasion secured wives by inviting the Sabines and their families to a feast and celebration of games. At an agreed signal each Roman seized the Sabine virgin who pleased his fancy and carried her away by force. When later the Sabines attacked the Romans to avenge the affront, the young wives besought their parents to make peace. The incident is known as the carrying away or rape of the Sabines. See Rome
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an ancient people of Italy, supposed to have been named from "Sabus," one of their deities. Little is known of their history. They were at war with the Romans at a very early period. A contest broke out between them 504 B. c., and a body of the Sabines migrated to Rome, where they were welcomed, and founded the powerful family and tribe of Claudii. The Sabines carried their ravages to the very gates of Rome, 469 b. c. On their defeat by Marcus Horatius, 449 B. c., their camp was found full of plunder obtained in the Roman territories. They were again at war with the Romans, 290 B. c., and having been vanquished, many of them were sold as slaves. The remaining citizens were admitted to the Roman franchise.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The outline in Aiton's (1910) and Collier's (1921) still holds: the Sabines were an Apennine people east of the Tiber, absorbed by Rome after their defeat in 290 BC and enrolled as citizens soon after. What has moved is how the material is read. Linguists now class Sabine with the Sabellic (Oscan-Umbrian) branch of Italic, known from only a handful of inscriptions and about a hundred words preserved by Roman writers, while the "rape of the Sabines" is treated as an origin-legend explaining Roman marriage ritual and the city's mixed foundation rather than as an event. Archaeology has partly rehabilitated one strand Collier's reports as history — the migration of a Sabine clan into Rome to become the Claudii — since the Lapis Satricanus, unearthed at Satricum in 1977, records the "companions" of a Publius Valerius around 500 BC and shows that mobile aristocratic warbands really did move between Latin and Sabine communities.
Written for this edition, 2026.