Piso in Annalibus scribit Sabino bello, quod fuit Romulo et Tatio, virum fortissimum Mettium Curtium Sabinum, cum Romulus cum suis ex superiore parte impressionem fecisset, in locum palustrem, qui tum fuit in Foro antequam cloacae sunt factae, secessisse atque ad suos in Capitolium recepisse; ab eo lacum Curtium invenisse nomen.

Piso in his Annals writes that in the Sabine War between Romulus and Tatius, a Sabine hero named Mettius Curtius, when Romulus with his men had charged down from higher ground and driven in the Sabines, got away into a swampy spot which at that time was in the Forum, before the sewers had been made, and escaped from there to his own men on the Capitoline; and from this the pool found its name.