The town on the Square Hill was larger and finer than any of the mountain villages, and after the first shock and fright of their capture passed, many of the girls began to think that what had happened was not so bad, after all. They all knew something about Romulus and his mountain troop, and many of his soldiers had been in the villages at one time and another on some errand. Apparently these half-outlawed fighters had become great men in the new settlement. They had a quarter of their own, in which they had built houses for their brides, shaded by some of the forest trees that were left when the land was cleared, and furnished with many things not known in the mountain villages. It was also true, and Romulus had known all along that it was, that many of his men had known something of the Sabine maidens, and would have married in the villages before, if they could. Considering that the elders of the villages would never have consented to such a thing, this was the only way it could possibly be brought about. It had seemed to him better to make it a sort of state affair than to encourage among the soldiers the idea that they could individually raid the villages and carry off the wives they chose without any religious authority at all. Romulus heard a great many confidential secrets from his men, one by one, that would have surprised those who did not know them. He believed that if it could be managed so that they could settle down in the quarter which was their own, and have homes of their own, they would be as good citizens as any in Rome. But he did not waste time in trying, by argument, to make Tullius and Naso and the other colonists believe this.
The public square was swept and made clean, and the walls of all the houses hung with garlands. The Roman matrons, old and young, had taken from their thrifty stores of home-woven linen and wool, robes and veils and mantles for the strangers, and provided the wedding feast with as much care as if each one of them had a daughter who was going to be married. In fact, according to Roman faith and law, these girls were daughters of Rome as soon as they became wives of Roman men, and had as much right in all public worship and festivals as if they had been born on the Palatine Hill. Since they could not be given away by their own fathers, it had been decided that they should be treated as daughters of the city, and the ten original fathers of the colony should be as their fathers.