Bride abduction in the context of Évariste Vital Luminais

Marriage (conubium) was a fundamental institution of society in ancient Rome and was used by Romans primarily as a tool for interfamilial alliances. The institution of Roman marriage was a practice of marital monogamy: Roman citizens could have only one spouse at a time in marriage but were allowed to divorce and remarry. This form of prescriptively monogamous marriage that co-existed with male resource polygyny (powerful men can have one wife and many other sexual partners) in Greco-Roman civilization may have arisen from the relative egalitarianism of democratic and republican city-states. Early Christianity embraced this ideal of monogamous marriage by adding its own teaching of sexual monogamy, and propagating it worldwide to become an essential element in many later Western cultures.

Roman marriage had precedents in myth. The abduction of the Sabine women may reflect the archaic custom of bride abduction. Rome's Sabine neighbours rejected overtures of intermarriage by Romulus and his band of male immigrants. According to Livy, Romulus and his men abducted the Sabine maidens but promised them honorable marriage, in which they would enjoy the benefits of property, citizenship, and children.