The land of the free

[timelets]

In antiquity the founder of a new settlement, in order to increase its population, would as a matter of course shark up a lot of homeless and destitute folk and pretend that they were ‘born of earth’ to be his progeny; Romulus now followed a similar course: to help fill his big new town, he threw open, in the ground – now enclosed – between the two copses as you go up the Capitoline hill, a place of asylum for fugitives. Hither fled for refuge all the rag–tag–and–bobtail from the neighbouring peoples: some free, some slaves, and all of them wanting nothing but a fresh start.
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There were not enough women, and that, added to the fact that there was no intermarriage with neighbouring communities, ruled out any hope of maintaining the level of population.
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Then the great moment came; the show began, and nobody had eyes or thoughts for anything else. This was the Romans’ opportunity: at a given signal all the able–bodied men burst through the crowd and seized the young women. Most of the girls were the prize of whoever got hold of them first, but a few conspicuously handsome ones had been previously marked down for leading senators.

--- Titus Livy. “The Early History of Rome.”