According to Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

, the Horatii were male triplets from Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. During a war between Rome and Alba Longa

Alba Longa

Alba Longa – in Italian sources occasionally written Albalonga – was an ancient city of Latium in central Italy southeast of Rome in the Alban Hills. Founder and head of the Latin League, it was destroyed by Rome around the middle of the 7th century BC. In legend, Romulus and Remus, founders of...

 during the reign of Tullus Hostilius

Tullus Hostilius

Tullus Hostilius was the legendary third of the Kings of Rome. He succeeded Numa Pompilius, and was succeeded by Ancus Marcius...

 (approx. 672-642 B.C.), it was agreed that settlement of the war would depend on the outcome of a battle between the Horatii and the Curiatii. The Curiatii were male triplets from Alba Longa and of the same age as the Horatii.

In the battle, the three Curiatii were wounded, but two of the Horatii were killed. The last of the Horatii, Publius, turned as if to flee. The Curiatii chased him but, as a result of their wounds, became separated. This enabled Horatius to slay them one by one.

When the victorious Horatius returned carrying the spoils of victory, his sister cried out in grief because she realized the Curiatius to whom she had been engaged was dead. Then Horatius killed his sister

Sororicide

Sororicide is the act of killing one's own sister.There are a number of examples of sororicide and fratricide in adolescents, even pre-adolescents, where sibling rivalry and resulting physical aggression can get out of hand and lead to the death of one of them, particularly...

, proclaiming, "So perish any Roman woman who mourns the enemy." For the murder, he was condemned to death but, upon the advice of a certain jurist named Tullus, Horatius appealed to the assembly of the people. Horatius' father, also called Publius, spoke to the people of his son's recent victory, and entreated them not to render him childless since he had, until recently, had four children. Persuaded by his father's arguments, the people acquitted Horatius. The legend might have been the reason for the condemned in Rome to be able to appeal to the populace. His father was required to expiate the crime by offering sacrifices, which were thereafter continued by the gens Horatia, and the son was required to pass under a beam laid across the street, as if a yoke, which remained in the city and became known as Sororium Tigillum

Sororium Tigillum

The Sororium Tigillum, which translates as the "sister's beam", was a wooden beam said to have been erected in Ancient Rome by the father of Publius Horatius, one of the three triplets Horatii...

, the "sister's gibbet".

The spoils of the Curiatii were hung in a place that became known as Pila Horatia.

Later references

The tale of the Horatii was much-discussed and portrayed from the Renaissance onwards, particularly in Italy and France. Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

 recounted it in his 1531 Discourses on Livy

Discourses on Livy

The Discourses on Livy is a work of political history and philosophy written in the early 16th century by the Italian writer and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, best known as the author of The Prince...

, and presents both a criticism of the Romans and Alba Longans (that they would allow the fate of a war come down to single combat) and also a commendation of the Romans' willingness to pass a sentence of death upon one who had so recently saved the city. In April 1578 the battle was re-enacted, in earnest, between supporters of Henry III of France

Henry III of France

Henry III was King of France from 1574 to 1589. As Henry of Valois, he was the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the dual titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.-Childhood:Henry was born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau,...

 and Henry I, Duke of Guise

Henry I, Duke of Guise

Henry I, Prince of Joinville, Duke of Guise, Count of Eu , sometimes called Le Balafré, "the scarred", was the eldest son of Francis, Duke of Guise, and Anna d'Este...

 — four of the six combatants died. David

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...

's key 1784 "Oath of the Horatii

Oath of the Horatii

Oath of the Horatii , is a work by French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784. It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities; Rome and Alba Longa, when three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from an...

" portrays an event from this story, continuing French interest in it that had also produced Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

's 1640 stage play Horace

Horace (play)

Horace is a 1972 television play written by Roy Minton and directed by Alan Clarke, first broadcast as part of BBC One's Play for Today series on 21 March 1972.-Plot:Diabetic Horace is mentally impaired and works in a joke shop...

. In 1801 Napoleon

Napoleon I of France

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

 even dubbed the French naval captain Amable Troude

Amable Troude

Amable Gilles Troude was a French Navy officer, hero of the Napoleonic wars.- Early career :...

 "the French Horatius" for his conduct whilst being pursued by a British squadron after the Battle of Algeciras. Commanding the 80-gun Formidable

French ship Formidable (1795)

Formidable was an 80-gun Tonnant class ship of the line of the French navy, laid down as Figuires and renamed in 1795. She was launched at Toulon in 1795. She participated in the Battle of Algeciras, the Battle of Cape Finisterre and several other actions before the British captured her at the...

, Troude chose to let his quickest opponent, the 74-gun HMS Venerable

HMS Venerable (1784)

HMS Venerable was a 74-gun third rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 19 April 1784 at Blackwall Yard.In 1797, Venerable served as Admiral Duncan's flagship at the Battle of Camperdown....

, catch him up; Venerable ended up so badly battered that the rest of the British had to abandon the chase to save her, allowing the Formidable to escape.

The story has frequently been musically and theatrically represented. Corneille's Horace has provided the basis for the libretti of two operas, Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

's 1786 Les Horaces

Les Horaces

Les Horaces is an operatic tragédie lyrique by Antonio Salieri. The text was by Nicolas-François Guillard after Pierre Corneille's Horace....

, and Domenico Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa

Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school...

's 1797 Gli Orazi e i Curiazi

Gli Orazi e i Curiazi

Gli Orazi e i Curiazi is an opera in three acts composed by Domenico Cimarosa to a libretto by Antonio Simeone Sografi, based on Pierre Corneille's tragedy, Horace.-History:...

. During the 1840s the story was mentioned in the Irish rebel song A Nation Once Again

A Nation Once Again

"A Nation Once Again" is a song, written in the early to mid-1840s by Thomas Osborne Davis . Davis was a founder of an Irish movement whose aim was the independence of Ireland....

and again adapted as an opera, this time as Orazi e Curiazi

Orazi e Curiazi

Orazi e Curiazi is an opera by the Italian composer Saverio Mercadante. It takes the form of a tragedia lirica in three acts. The libretto, by Salvadore Cammarano is based on the Roman legend of the fight between the Horatii and the Curiatii...

by Saverio Mercadante

Saverio Mercadante

Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...

. The story is used as the scenario of the orchestral work Horace Victorieux by Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...

, composed in 1920 and described as a 'mimed symphony' (symphonie mimée d'après Tite-Live) though it was originally conceived as a ballet. Also in the twentieth century, Bertholt Brecht wrote The Horatians and the Curiatians based on the story, followed by Heiner Müller

Heiner Müller

Heiner Müller was a German dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is arguably the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht...

's The Horatian, which was later transformed by Heiner Goebbels

Heiner Goebbels

Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, music director and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland....

 into a three-movement song that re-tells the myth; in the third movement, the Horatian is crowned with the laurel for his merits and simultaneously executed for his guilt.

In the 1945 French film, Les Enfants du Paradis

Children of Paradise

Les Enfants du Paradis, released as Children of Paradise in North America, is a 1945 French film by French director Marcel Carné, made during the German occupation of France during World War II...

, the stage manager refers to his demanding audiences as "Horatii and Curiatii". The brothers are also referenced in Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...

's 1954 Senso

Senso (film)

Senso is a 1954 melodrama film, an adaptation of Camillo Boito's Italian novella Senso by the Italian director Luchino Visconti, with Alida Valli as Livia and Farley Granger as Lieutenant Franz Mahler....

. Patrick Larkin

Patrick Larkin

Patrick Larkin is a bestselling novelist specializing in historical, military, and espionage thrillers. His collaborations with Larry Bond, including Red Phoenix, Vortex, Cauldron, The Enemy Within, and Day of Wrath, have won critical acclaim for their suspense, realism, and unblinking appreciation...

's novel The Lazarus Vendetta involves 'the Horatii', employed by Lazarus and with identical appearance, strength and agility resulting from years of painstaking surgery, physical conditioning and training (though in this version of the Horatii they are not birth brothers). The 1961 film Duel of Champions

Duel of Champions

Orazi e Curiazi is a 1961 film about the Roman legend of the Horatii, triplet brothers from Rome who fought a duel against the Curiatii, triplet brothers from Alba Longa in order to determine the outcome of a war between their two nations.This film was directed by Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young...

is an adaptation of the story of the Horatii.