Tatius

TATIVS, king or general of the Sabines who inhabited the city of Cures, with whom the Romans waged the first war. This brave chieftain proved a formidable enemy to the thrn infant colony of Rome, within whose walls he and his soldiers succeeded in penetrating. and they would perhaps have destroyed it, if the Sabine women, whom the Romans some time before carried off, had not made themselves the medium of consummating peace between their husbands and their own parents. The two people became united as one, at the expense of the power of Romulus. for he shared the functions of royalty with Tatius, and admitted into the senate one hundred of the principal Sabines. Tatius was soon after assassinated, and had no successor. On a denarius of the Tituria family there is a naked and bearded head, which accompanied by TA. in monogram, and the legend SABINus [the Titurii, thus referring to the Sabine origin,] is generally considered by numismatists to be meant for that of Tatius, the Sabine.
  Visconti, in his Iconographic Romaine, remarks that certain denarii of the Tituria and Vettia families present two very forcible instances of the eagerness with which those Roman magistrates, who presided over the mint of the republic, availed themselves to every opportunity to unite family pretentions with historical facts, in the legends and types of their coins. It is thus that Titurius and Vettius Sabinus Index, magistrates who prided themselves on their descent from the ancient Sabines. and probably from Tatius himself, have caused the head of this chieftain to be engraved on the coinage of the respective families. On both medals in question we accordingly see the head of Tatius without ornament. And on the reverse of the Titurian denarius, the Sabines are represented as in the act of overwhelming, with their bucklers. the virgin Tarpeia. who had just betrayed the capital into their hands. The posterity of Tatius, doubtless, wished to do honour to the founder of their race by manifesting his hatred of traitors, even while profiting from the treason.-On the denarius of the Vettia family, we see, behind the head, the word SABINus, being the surname branch of that family. The monogram, composed of a T. and an A., gives the two initial letters of the name Tatius. The two letters S.C.-Senatus Consulto--mark the fact the Titus Vettius Sabinus Judex caused this piece of money to the struck by the authority of the senate. "The bearded man who stands in a car drawn by two horses (adds Visconti), is probably Tatius himself. The palm branch, which on the first described medal is at the side of the portrait, is on the second coin seen behind the figure of the Sabine prince, and bears allusion to his victories." [Part i., pp. 23-24.]