According to Mommsen, the story of his death, (for which see Plutarch) looks like an historical version of the abolition of blood-revenge. Tatius, who in some respects resembles Remus, is not an historical personage, but the eponymous hero of the religious college called Sodales Titii. As to this body Tacitus expresses two different opinions, representing two different traditions: that it was introduced either by Tatius himself to preserve the Sabine cult in Rome; or by Romulus in honour of Tatius, at whose grave its members were bound to offer a yearly sacrifice. The sedates fell into abeyance at the end of the republic, but were revived by Augustus and existed to the end of the 2nd century A.D. Augustus himself and the emperor Claudius belonged to the college, and all its members were of senatorial rank. Varro mentions him as a king of Rome who enlarged the city and established certain cults, but he may just have been the eponym of the tribe Titiae, or even an invention to serve as a precedent for collegial magistracy. He had one daughter Tatia, who married Numa Pompilius, and one son, who was the ancestor of the noble family of Tatii.
Sources
- Livy i. 10-14.
- Tacitus, Annals, i. 54, Histories ii. 95.
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ii. 36-52.
- Plutarch, Romulus, 19-24.
- Joachim Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung (1885) iii. 446.
- Schwegler, Romische Geschichte, bk. ix. 3, 14; x. 5.
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