It depicts a scene from the story of the Horatii and Curiatii, a Roman legend about a seventh-century BC dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa,[2] and stresses the importance of patriotism and masculine self-sacrifice for one's country.

The three brothers, all of whom appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome,[1] are shown stretching their hands towards their father who holds their swords out of them.

She is Camilla, a sister of the Horatii brothers, who is also betrothed to one of the Curiatii fighters, and thus she weeps in the realisation that, whatever happens, she will lose someone she loves.

Ultimately, David's picture manifests a progressive outlook, deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas, that eventually contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy.

Shortly afterward, the king went up to the scaffold also accused of treason, as the sons of Brutus, and with the vote of the artist in the National Assembly, which supported the execution of Louis XVI.

The painting depicts the Roman Horatius family, who, according to Titus Livius' Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City) had been chosen for a ritual duel against three members of the Curiatii, a family from Alba Longa, in order to settle disputes between the Romans and the latter city.

Their clarity of purpose, mirrored by David's simple yet powerful use of tonal contrasts, lends the painting, and its message about the nobility of patriotic sacrifice, an electric intensity.

[8] The mother and sisters are shown clothed in silken garments seemingly melting into tender expressions of sorrow.

Upon the defeat of the Curiatii, the remaining Horatius journeyed home to find his sister cursing Rome over the death of her fiancé.

David later decided that this subject was too gruesome a way of sending the message of public duty overcoming private feeling, but his next major painting, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons depicted a similar scene - Lucius Junius Brutus brooding as the bodies of his sons, whose executions for treason he had ordered, are returned home.

Despite the ties between the two families, the Horatii's father exhorts his sons to fight the Curiatii and they obey, despite the lamentations of the women.

The public's dissatisfaction with the painting's poor viewing conditions obliged the gallery to move it to a more prominent location[citation needed].