One of the defining elements of Romanity -probably the most important- was the civitas , that is, citizenship. This concept, longed for by all the inhabitants of all the towns of the empire, since it meant the acquisition of a series of rights such as the suffragii (vote), the honorum (access to public office), the commercii (own property and sign contracts), have legal benefits, etc. And all thanks to a mythical incident that allegedly occurred in the 8th century BC:the kidnapping of the Sabine women and the subsequent agreement between the Romans and the Sabines, which prevented war by creating a diarchy in which each member of the community acquired the status of quirites , the original form of citizenship.
In its beginnings, tradition has it, Rome was short of women. To solve it, Romulus, founder of the city together with his brother Remus and first king, organized sports games in honor of Neptune, extending the invitation to participate to the surrounding towns. One of them was from Sabinia, in the mountains of Lazio, who came accompanied by their families.
In reality, it was all a ruse by Romulus, who in the middle of the trials gave a signal for the Romans to kidnap the Sabine women and throw their husbands out of the city. Thus, the Romans got wives but at the cost of seriously offending their neighbors, who coldly chewed their desire for revenge for a year.
Finally, they put it into practice by declaring war. In the myth appears the inevitable figure of a traitor character, a Roman woman named Tarpeya who opened the city gates for them in exchange for what they carried in their arms. It was an allusion to the gold bracelets with which people used to adorn themselves but the Sabines, despising her baseness, paid her by crushing her with another thing that they also carried in their arms:her shield; the place where she died was what would later be known as Roca Tarpeya, the place where prisoners of treason were executed. The two sides clashed at Lake Curcio without the balance leaning towards either, but there were no more fights because the Sabine women, dressed in mourning, intervened claiming that they could lose their current husbands if one side won, but also their parents. and brothers if the other did.
Thus, Romans and Sabines formed a dual monarchy in which the former were represented by Romulus and the latter by their king Titus Tatius, who also sealed the alliance by granting the hands of his daughters in marriage:Hersilia and Numa Pompilius. (the one who would be the second king of Rome) that of Tacia. Five years this joint government lasted, ending in the year 745 BC. because of the disagreements between the two, which originated after some Sabines harassed some Laurentian ambassadors and Rómulo handed over those responsible to those offended. Tacio tried to rescue them by force and ended up assassinated during a religious service; according to another version he went to request his release and upon returning unsuccessfully he was lynched by the Romans themselves, leaving his companion as the sole ruler.
Today Tito Tacio is not considered a historical character but rather an eponym of the Titii sodales or flavial priests, who symbolized the survival of the Italic cults before being absorbed by the Romans during the Republic, or perhaps a metaphor for the first steps of the dual magistracy of the consulate. That is why Tatius is not included among the seven classical kings (the aforementioned Romulus and Numa Pompilius plus Tullius Hostilius, Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius and Tarquinius the Proud ) who ruled from 753 B.C. until 509 BC, the year in which the monarchy was overthrown and the republican era was ushered in.
However, there was something in that diarchy that did transcend:despite the fact that each town kept its name (that is, Rome continued to be Rome and Sabinia continued to be called Sabinia), the members of those two communities merged into one and came to be called quirites . The origin of that word is not known. In the chapter dedicated to Rómulo of his Parallel Lives , Plutarch supposes it derived from Cures, the Sabine city where Titus Tacio was born (something supported by Titus Livy in his Roman History ), discarding the old interpretation that linked it to Quiritis (or Kiris ), the sacred spear of the goddess Juno according to the Sabines.
But most historians think that it comes from co-uiri-um , which would mean assembly of men. This assembly would be the seed of the curia or, to be exact, the curiae , in the plural, since initially there was a general one of thirty members (the Curia Hostilia, from which the Senate would be born) plus others in which all the patricians were integrated as they were assimilated to the corresponding tribes:Ramnes, Titienses and Luceres; Although not all experts agree, the first would allude to Romulus and the Latins, the second to Titus Tacio and the Sabines, and the third -of unknown etymology- to the Etruscans. Each tribe was made up of ten curiae, each of these by ten gens (lineages) and each gens for ten families.
In any case, the concept of Ius Quiritum became part of Roman Law as a reference to the quirites (populus Romanus quirites was the complete expression), those individuals who met the requirements established by the Ius Civile , the legislative code that regulated relations between citizens and granted them the rights that we outlined at the beginning. As we know, the word did not last because it underwent a change over time:it remained only for domestic affairs, being used Romani (Romans) for the external ones, which would be the one that transcended historically.