The trouble with tatius

Abstract

David's Intervention of the Sabine Women is a recognised landmark in post-Revolutionary French history painting. Assessments of its significance have proliferated. Recent interpretations have emphasised the role of gender and the theme of reconciliation. This article addresses an aspect of the painting that particularly attracted the attention of David's contemporaries the portrayal of the conflict between the two male protagonists, Romulus and Tatius. It examines the social implications of David's characterisation of these figures and, in particular, its relationship to the medical theories of Cabanis and to the debates on the nature of participatory democracy which preceded the Constitution of the Year VIII (1799) debates in which Cabanis played an influential role. It is argued that the Sabines engaged as much with natural history as with history in the accepted sense, and that the painting owed much of its success to the way in which current preoccupations with aesthetic, social and medical distinctions appeared to coincide in its subject.