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Ab Urbe Condita, books 3-4 - 3

Perseus Latin · Perseus Latin · 1 sections

1. 1

   Book III AFTER the capture of Antium, Titus Aemilius and Quintus Fabius were elected consuls. This was that 467 Fabius who had been the sole survivor of his family destroyed at the Cremera. In his former consulship Aemilius had already supported the assignment of land to the plebs. Consequently, when he entered a second time upon the office, not only had the agrarians begun to have hopes of a law, but the tribunes, who had often tried to carry the measure against the opposition of the consuls, now took it up in the belief that with the co-operation of a consul it could certainly be made good; and the consul continued of the same mind. The possessors of the land, comprising a large proportion of the patricians, complained that the head of the state was openly supporting tribunician policies and making himself popular by a generosity exhibited at other men's expense; they thus diverted the resentment awakened by the whole affair from the tribunes to the consul. A bitter struggle was impending, when Fabius, by a proposal which neither side found injurious, set the matter right. Under the leadership and auspices of Titus Quinctius, as he pointed out, a considerable territory had been conquered the year before from the Volsci; Antium, a well-situated maritime city, could be made the seat of a colony; in this way the plebs would obtain farms without causing the landholders to complain, and the state would be at harmony. This suggestion was adopted. As commissioners for distributing the land Fabius appointed Titus Quinctius, Aulus Verginius, and Publius Furius, and it was ordered that those who wished to receive grants should give in their names. There at once appeared the fastidiousness which usually attends abundance, and so few persons enrolled that Volscian colonists were added to fill out the number; the rest of the populace preferred demanding land at Rome to receiving it elsewhere. The Aequi begged Quintus Fabius, who had invaded their country, to grant them peace; and broke it themselves by a sudden raid on Latin territory. Quintus Servilius, being sent against the Aequi in the following year —when he and Spurius Postumius were consuls —made a permanent camp in the Latin country, where the army was attacked by a pestilence which deprived it of the power to act. The war dragged on into its third year, the consulship of Quintus Fabius and Titus Quinctius. To Fabius was given the command against the Aequi, without the customary drawing of lots, since he had been victorious over them and had granted them peace. Setting out in the full expectation that the glory of his name would bring the enemy to terms, he sent envoys to their national council and bade them announce that Quintus Fabius the consul said that he had brought peace from the Aequi to Rome, and was then bringing war from Rome to the Aequi in the same right hand, now armed, which he had formerly given them in friendship. Whose faithlessness and perjury were responsible for this, the gods were even then witnesses, and would presently punish the offenders. Yet however that might be, he would himself prefer that the Aequi should even now freely repent, instead of suffering the penalties of war. If they did so, they could count on a safe refuge in the clemency they had already proved; but if they rejoiced in perjury, it was rather with the angry gods than with their enemies that they would be at war. So far were these words from having the slightest effect on anyone, that the envoys narrowly escaped violation, and an army was dispatched to Algidus against the Romans. On the arrival of this news at Rome, the insult, rather than the danger, brought the other consul out from the City. And so two consular armies approached the enemy, drawn up in line of battle, that they might instantly engage them. But since it happened to be near the end of the day, a man called out to them from an outpost of the enemy, This, Romans, is making a parade of war, not waging it. When night is about to fall, you draw up your battle-line; we need more hours of daylight for the struggle which is close at hand. To-morrow at sunrise form your battle-line again; there will be opportunity for fighting, never fear! Galled by these words the troops were led back to their camp to await the morrow; the night would be a long one, they felt, that must intervene before the combat. Meanwhile they refreshed themselves with food and sleep. When it grew light next morning, the Roman army took the field, some time before the enemy. At last the Aequi too came out. The battle raged fiercely on both sides, for the Romans fought with exasperation and hatred, while the Aequi were conscious that the danger in which they were involved was due to their own fault, and this, with their despair of ever being trusted again, incited them to the last degree of daring and exertion. Nevertheless they were unable to withstand the attack of the Romans. And yet, when they had been defeated and had fallen back to their own territory, the warlike soldiers, their spirit as little inclined to peace as ever, complained against their generals for having staked the cause on a pitched battle, a species of fighting in which the Romans excelled; the Aequi, they said, were better at pillaging and raiding, and a number of scattered bands could make war more effectively than the great mass of a single army. Leaving a garrison, therefore, in their camp, they crossed the Roman border in so headlong an incursion as to carry terror even to the City. Moreover, the unexpectedness of the inroad added to the alarm, for nothing could have been apprehended less than that an enemy who was defeated and almost shut up in his camp should be thinking of a raid; and the country people who in their fright came tumbling in through the gates told not of pillaging nor of small bands of raiders, but, exaggerating everything in their senseless fear, cried out that whole armies of the enemy were close at hand and rushing on the City in a serried column. The very vagueness of these rumours led to further exaggeration as the bystanders passed them on to others. The running and shouting of men as they called To arms! was almost like the panic in a captured city. It chanced that the consul Quinctius had returned from Algidus to Rome. This circumstance allayed men's fears, and when the confusion had been stilled, he indignantly reminded them that the enemy they dreaded had been conquered, and posted watches at the gates. He then convened the senate, and in accordance with a resolution which the Fathers passed, proclaimed a suspension of the courts. After that he set out to defend the frontier, leaving Quintus Servilius as prefect of the City, but did not meet with the enemy in the field. The other consul campaigned with great success. Knowing where the enemy would come, he fell upon them when they were weighed down with the booty which incumbered their advancing column, and caused them bitterly to rue their pillaging. But few of them escaped the ambush, and the spoils were all recovered. So the suspension of the courts, which had lasted four days, was lifted on the return of the consul Quinctius to the City. The census was then taken and Quinctius solemnized the concluding purification. There are said to have been registered 104,714 citizens, besides orphans and widows. In the Aequian country there was no memorable action after that; the people retired to their towns, and permitted their farms to be burnt and ravaged. The consul made a number of forays with his army throughout the enemy's territory, and returned to Rome with great renown and huge spoils. The next consuls were Aulus Postumius Albus and Spurius Furius Fusus. (Some writers spell the name Fusius instead of Furius, which I note lest anybody should regard as a substitution of one man for another what is really only a matter of names.) There was no doubt but that one consul would make war on the Aequi, and these accordingly appealed to the Ecetranian Volsci for help. It was eagerly granted them —such was the rivalry between these nations in inveterate hatred of Rome —and the most vigorous preparations were made for war. The Hernici perceived, and warned the Romans, that Ecetra had gone over to the Aequi. Suspicion already rested on the colony of Antium, on the ground that a large body of men, escaping from the place at the time of its capture, had taken refuge with the Aequi; and in fact they fought with the greatest spirit all through the Aequian war; afterwards, when the Aequi had been shut up in their towns, this company dispersed, returned to Antium, and won over the colonists, who were even then at heart disloyal to the Romans. The plot was not yet ripe when their proposed defection was reported to the senate, and the consuls were instructed to summon the leaders of the colony to Rome and inquire what was going on. These men made no objection to coming, but on being introduced into the senate by the consuls returned such answers to the questions they were asked that they were under a stronger suspicion when dismissed than they had been on their arrival. War was from that moment regarded as certain. Spurius Furius, one of the consuls, having received that command, set out against the Aequi. In the country of the Hernici he found the enemy engaged in marauding, and being ignorant of their strength, because they had never all been seen together, rashly offered battle with an army which was no match for theirs in numbers. At the first attack he was repulsed and withdrew into his camp. Nor did this end his danger, for both that night and the following day his camp was so vigorously hemmed in and assaulted that not even a messenger could be got off to Rome. The Hernici reported the defeat and blockade of the consul and his army, striking such terror into the hearts of the senators that they passed a decree which has always been held to signify the direst necessity: that Postumius, the other consul, should be commissioned to see to it that the republic took no hurt. It was deemed wisest that the consul himself should remain in Rome, to enroll all who were capable of bearing arms; and that a proconsul, Titus Quinctius, should be sent, with an army of the allies, to relieve the camp. In order to fill out this army the Latins and the Hernici and the colony of Antium were commanded to furnish Quinctius with emergency-men, as they used then to term hastily-levied auxiliaries. There was much manœuvring during the days that followed, and many attacks were delivered in one place or another, for the enemy, having a preponderance of numbers, set about harassing the Roman forces in many places, with the expectation that they would prove unequal to all the demands that were made upon them; at the same time that they were besieging the camp, a part of their army was sent to devastate the Roman fields and to attack the City itself, should an opportunity offer. Lucius Valerius was left to defend the City, while the consul Postumius was sent out to protect the frontier from pillage. There was no relaxation anywhere of vigilance or effort; watches were set in the City, outposts were established before the gates, and troops were posted on the walls; and, as was necessary in the midst of such confusion, the courts were suspended for several days. In camp meanwhile the consul Furius, having begun by submitting tamely to the blockade, caught the Aequi off their guard, and made a sortie by the decuman gate. He might have pursued the enemy, but stopped for fear the camp might be assailed from the opposite quarter. The lieutenant Furius, a brother of the consul, was carried a good way off by his charge, nor did he observe, in the ardour of pursuit, either that his friends were retiring or that the enemy were moving up to attack him in the rear. His retreat was thus cut off, and after repeated but unsuccessful attempts to force his way back to the camp, he perished, fighting bravely. The consul too, upon learning that his brother was surrounded, set his face towards the battle and plunged into the midst of the mellay, with more rashness than prudence; for he received a wound, and was barely rescued by the men about him. This misfortune dismayed his own troops and quickened the courage of the enemy, who were so inspirited by the death of the lieutenant and the wounding of the consul that from that moment no force could withstand them, and the Romans were driven into their camp and again besieged, being no match for their opponents either in confidence or strength. The very existence of the army would have been imperilled, had not Titus Quinctius come up with the foreign troops, the Latins and Hernici. He found the Aequi intent on the Roman camp, and truculently displaying the head of the lieutenant. Attacking them in the rear, while the besieged, in answer to a signal he had given them from afar, were making a sally from the camp, he intercepted a large body of them. There was less carnage but a more headlong rout in the case of the Aequi who were in Roman territory. These men were dispersed and collecting booty when they were attacked by Postumius at several points where he had opportunely stationed troops. The pillagers, fleeing in a disordered crowd, fell in with Quinctius, who was returning from his victory with the wounded consul; whereupon the consular army splendidly avenged the consul's wound and the slaughter of the lieutenant and his cohorts. Heavy losses were inflicted and sustained on both sides at that time. It is hard to make a trustworthy statement, in a matter of such antiquity, as to just how many fought and how many fell; yet Valerius Antias ventures to specify the totals, saying that the Romans lost five thousand eight hundred in the country of the Hernici; that of the Aequian marauders who were roaming about and pillaging within the Roman borders two thousand four hundred were slain by Aulus Postumius, the consul; and that the rest of the expedition, which stumbled upon Quinctius as they were driving off their booty, got off by no means so lightly, for their killed amounted, so he says, with minute particularity, to four thousand two hundred and thirty. When the army had returned to Rome, and the suspension of the courts was ended, the heavens were seen to blaze with numerous fires, and other portents either were actually seen or were due to the illusions of the terror-stricken observers. To avert these alarms a three days' season of prayer was ordered, and during this period all the shrines were crowded with a throng of men and women beseeching the pardon of the gods. After that the cohorts of the Latins and the Hernici were thanked by the senate for their energetic service and sent home. A thousand men from Antium who had come too late to help, when the battle was over, were dismissed, almost in disgrace. The elections were then held, and Lucius Aebutius and Publius Servilius were chosen consuls. On the first of August, then the beginning of the year, they entered office. It was the sickly season, and chanced to be a year of pestilence both in the City and in the country, for beasts as well as men; and the people increased the virulence of the disease, in their dread of pillage, by receiving flocks and country-folk into the City. This conflux of all kinds of living things distressed the citizens with its strange smells, while the country-people, being packed into narrow quarters, suffered greatly from the heat and want of sleep; and the exchange of ministrations and mere contact spread the infection. The Romans could scarce endure the calamities which pressed hard upon them, when suddenly envoys from the Hernici appeared, announcing that the Aequi and the Volsci had joined forces and established a camp in their territory, from which base they were devastating their land with an enormous army. Not only did the reduced numbers of the senate show their allies that the nation was prostrated by the pestilence, but they also returned a melancholy answer to their suit, that the Hernici, namely, with the help of the Latins, must defend their own possessions; for the City of Rome, in a sudden visitation of divine displeasure, was being ravaged by disease; if there should come any respite from their suffering, they would help their friends, as they had done the year before and on every other occasion. The allies departed, bearing home, in return for their sad tidings, a reply that was even sadder, since it meant that their people must sustain by themselves a war which they could hardly have sustained with the powerful assistance of the Romans. No longer did the enemy confine themselves to the country of the Hernici; they proceeded thence to invade the Roman fields, which had been made desolate even without the violence of war. Encountering no one there, not even an unarmed man, and passing through a country wholly destitute not only of defenders but also of cultivation, they came to the third milestone on the Gabinian Way. Death had taken Aebutius, the Roman consul; for his colleague Servilius there was little hope, though he still breathed; the disease had attacked most of the leading men, the greater part of the senators, and almost all of military age, so that their numbers were not only insufficient for the expeditions which so alarming a situation called for, but were almost too small for mounting guard. The watchmen's duty was performed by those of the senators themselves whose years and strength admitted of it; the rounds were made and the watches supervised by the plebeian aediles; into their hands had passed the supreme control, and the majesty of consular authority. In this helpless plight, without a leader and without strength, the commonwealth was saved by its tutelary gods and the good fortune of the City, which inspired the Volsci and Aequi with the spirit of plunderers rather than of soldiers. For they were so far from entertaining any hope of approaching, not to speak of capturing, the walls of Rome, and the distant sight of her roofs and beetling hills so damped their ardour, that the entire army began to murmur, and to ask why they should waste their time in desolate and abandoned fields, where bodies of beasts and men lay rotting and there was no booty, when they might be invading an unspoiled country, the land of Tusculum, abounding in wealth; so they suddenly pulled up their standards, and passed by cross-roads through the Labican fields to the hills of Tusculum, and on that point all the impetus and fury of the war converged. Meanwhile the Hernici and Latins, moved not by pity alone but by shame, if they should fail to oppose the common enemy, advancing in force against the City of Rome, and should bring no assistance to their besieged allies, united their armies and proceeded to the City. Failing to find the enemy there, but following the report and traces of his march, they met him as he was coming down from the Tusculan valley into that of Alba. There they engaged the invaders on far from equal terms, and their loyalty to their friends was for the moment not attended with success. In Rome the ravages of the disease were no less fatal than those of the sword had been amongst her allies. The surviving consul died; and death took other famous men, the augurs Marcus Valerius and Titus Verginius Rutulus, and the head curio, Servius B.C. 463 Sulpicius; as for the base rabble, the violence of the plague stalked at large amongst them; until the senate, finding no help in man, sent the people to the gods in prayer, commanding them to take their wives and children and supplicate Heaven for forgiveness. Thus summoned by the state's authority to do what each was impelled to by his own distress, they crowded all the shrines. Everywhere were prostrate matrons, sweeping the floors of the temples with their hair, while they besought the angry gods to grant them pardon and end the pestilence. After that, little by little, whether it was that the gods had been persuaded to forgive or that the sickly season was now past, those whose disease had run its course began to regain their health; and men's thoughts now turned to the commonwealth. Several interregna had expired, when Publius Valerius Publicola, three days after being made interrex, declared the election to the consulship of Lucius Lucretius Tricipitinus and Titus Veturius Geminus —or Vetusius, if that was his name. On the 11th of August they took office, the nation being by that time so strong that it was able not only to defend itself, but even to assume the offensive. Accordingly, when the Hernici reported that the enemy had crossed their borders, they were promptly offered assistance. Two consular armies were enlisted; Veturius was sent to carry the war into the country of the Volsci; while Tricipitinus, having been appointed to secure the territory of the allies from inroads, proceeded no further than the land of the Hernici. Veturius in his first battle defeated and routed his opponents; Lucretius, while encamped among the Hernici, was eluded by a company of raiders, who marched over the mountains of Praeneste and thence down into the campagna; there they laid waste the Praenestine and Gabinian fields; and from the latter district turned towards the hills about Tusculum. The City of Rome itself received a great fright, more on account of the surprise than from any lack of resources for defence. Quintus Fabius was in charge of the City. Arming the young men and disposing his defences, he made everything secure and tranquil. And so the enemy, having laid hold of the plunder in their immediate neighbourhood, did not venture to approach Rome, but making a detour, set out towards home. The farther they got from the hostile City the less was their anxiety, till they came unexpectedly upon Lucretius the consul, who having already marked their line of march, had drawn up his troops and was eager to fight. The spirits of the Romans were therefore prepared for their task, while the enemy were stricken with a sudden panic on being attacked, though by somewhat inferior numbers. The Romans completely routed the great multitude, and driving them into deep valleys, from which escape was difficult, surrounded them. There the Volscian name was almost blotted out. Thirteen thousand four hundred and seventy fell in the battle and the flight, seventeen hundred and fifty were taken alive, and twenty-seven military standards were brought in, as I find recorded in certain annals; and though there may be some exaggeration of the numbers, it was beyond question a great slaughter. The victorious consul, in possession of enormous spoils, returned to the permanent camp he had occupied before. Then the consuls encamped together, and the Volsci and Aequi united their shattered forces. The ensuing battle was the third of that year. Fortune bestowed the victory where she had done before; the enemy were routed, and even lost their camp. Rome was thus restored to her former condition, and the success of the campaign at once occasioned disturbances in the City. Gaius Terentilius Harsa was tribune of the plebs that year. Thinking that the absence of the consuls afforded the tribunes an opportunity for action, he employed some days in complaining to the people of the pride of the patricians, and inveighed especially against the authority of the consuls, as a thing excessive and intolerable in a free state. For it was only in name, he said, that it was less hateful than that of a king; in reality it was almost crueler, since in place of one master they had now got two, who possessed an unregulated and unlimited power, and while free themselves and without restraint, brought to bear all the terrors of the law and all its punishments upon the plebs. That they might not for ever have this licence, he was about to propose a law providing for the appointment of five men to write out the statutes pertaining to the consular power; such authority over them as the people had granted the consuls they should enjoy, but they should not make a law of their own whims and caprices. When this measure had been promulgated, the Fathers were alarmed lest they might be humbled, in the absence of the consuls; the prefect of the City, Quintus Fabius, convened the senate, and attacked the measure and its author himself with such bitterness that if both the consuls had been present to outface the tribune there was nothing they could have added to his threats and denunciations. Terentilius, he said, had laid an ambush and watching his opportunity had attacked the state. If the angry gods had given them a tribune like him the year before, when they were suffering from war and disease, it would have been impossible to save the situation. Finding both consuls dead, the citizens plague-stricken, and confusion everywhere, he would have proposed a law to do away with consular government, and would have led the Volsci and the Aequi to besiege the City. Pray what did he desire? Was he not at liberty, if the consuls had committed any act of pride or cruelty against a citizen, to call them into court and accuse them where the judges would be the very men against one of whom the injury had been done? It was not the authority of the consul but the power of the tribune that he was making hateful and intolerable; this power had been reconciled and brought into harmony with the senate, but was now being degraded again to its former evil state. Yet he would not supplicate Terentilius to abandon the course on which he had embarked. It is you other tribunes, he cried, whom we beg to reflect, as a matter of the last importance, that your power was obtained for the purpose of assisting individuals, not for the destruction of us all; that you were elected tribunes of the plebs, not enemies of the senate. To us it is a source of sorrow, to you of odium, that the state should be attacked in the absence of its defenders. You will be diminishing, not your authority, but your unpopularity, if you plead with your colleague to postpone the question, as it stands, until the arrival of the consuls. Even the Aequi and the Volsci, when disease last year had carried off the consuls, refrained from pressing a cruel and pitiless war against us. The tribunes pleaded with Terentilius, and the measure having been ostensibly postponed, but in reality killed, the consuls were immediately summoned. Lucretius returned with vast spoils and far greater glory; and this he increased, on his arrival, by exposing all the booty in the Campus Martius, where it lay for three days, that every man might identify and carry off what belonged to him. The other things, for which no owner appeared, were sold. That the consul had earned a triumph all agreed; but the matter was put off, for the tribune was urging his law, and this was a question of more importance in the eyes of Lucretius. The measure was debated several days, not only in the senate but before the people. Finally the tribune gave way to the majesty of the consul and desisted. The general and his army then received their meed of honour; Lucretius triumphed over the Volsci and the Aequi, and his own legions followed the triumphal chariot. The other consul was permitted to enter the City in an ovation, without soldiers. In the following year the Terentilian law was brought up again by the entire college and menaced the new consuls, to wit, Publius Volumnius and Servius Sulpicius. This year the heavens were seen to blaze, and the earth was shaken with a prodigious quake. That a cow had spoken —a thing which had found no credence the year before —was now believed. Among other portents there was even a rain of flesh, which is said to have been intercepted by vast numbers of birds flying round in the midst of it; what fell to the ground lay scattered about for several days, but without making any stench. The two commissioners for sacred rites consulted the Sibylline Books, where it was predicted that there was danger to come from a concourse of foreigners, lest they attack the highest places of the City, and blood be shed; amongst other things was a warning to avoid factions. The tribunes charged them with trying to hinder their law, and a violent struggle was impending; when lo! —that the same cycle of events might recur each year —the Hernici announced that the Volsci and the Aequi, despite the losses they had sustained, were again fitting out their armies; that Antium was the centre of the enterprise; that at Ecetra Antian colonists were holding public meetings; and that the Antiates were the head and sinews of the war. After listening to this report, the senate decreed a levy, and directed the consuls to divide between them the direction of the war, so that one might operate against the Volsci, the other against the Aequi. The tribunes openly and loudly protested in the Forum that the Volscian war was a prearranged farce, and that the nobles had employed the Hernici to act a part in it: they no longer used manhood even, to suppress the liberty of the Roman People, but cajoled and tricked them. Inasmuch as the almost total destruction of the Volsci and Aequi made it incredible that they should be going to war on their own initiative, new enemies were trumped up, and a loyal and neighbouring colony was traduced. It was against the innocent Antiates that war was being declared; it was being waged against the Roman plebeians, whom the consuls would load with arms and lead out of the City in hot haste, exiling and banishing citizens to avenge themselves upon the tribunes. By these means —and they need not think that anything else had been intended —the law was already defeated, unless, while the situation was still intact, while they were at home, while they still wore the toga, they should guard themselves against expulsion from the City and submitting to the yoke. If they proved courageous, help would not be wanting; the tribunes were all of one mind. There was no fear of foreign foes, no danger; the gods had seen to it the previous year that they might defend their liberties in safety. To this purport the tribunes. But the consuls, on the other hand, had placed their chairs in full sight of the tribunes, and began to hold the levy. The tribunes hastened to the place, drawing the people after them. A few were cited, as if by way of a test, and immediately a riot began. As often as a lictor arrested a man on the consul's order, a tribune would command that he be released; in every case it was not a man's right that determined his conduct, but the confidence he had in his strength; and one had to make good by force what one meant to do. Precisely as the tribunes had borne themselves in preventing the levy, so did the senators in blocking the law, which was brought forward every day the comitia could be held. The quarrel broke out when the tribunes had ordered the people to separate, since the patricians would not permit themselves to be removed. And yet the older nobles for the most part took no share in an affair which was not to be guided by wisdom, but had been committed to rashness and impudence. To a considerable extent the consuls too kept aloof, lest they should expose their dignity to some affront in the general confusion. There was a young man, Caeso Quinctius, emboldened not only by his noble birth but also by his great stature and physical strength; and to these gifts of the gods he had himself added many honours in the field, and also forensic eloquence, so that no citizen was held to be readier, whether with tongue or with hand. When this man had taken his place in the midst of the band of senators, towering above his fellows as though wielding all the might of dictators and consuls in his voice and strength of body, he would sustain unaided the attacks of the tribunes and the fury of the rabble. His leadership often drove the tribunes from the Forum and ignominiously routed the plebeians; the man who crossed his path came off bruised and stripped; so that it was clear that if things were allowed to go on in this way the law was beaten. Finally, when the other tribunes had already been pretty well cowed, one of their college named Aulus Verginius summoned Caeso to stand trial on a capital charge. The man's fierce nature was rather aroused by this than terrified; and he continued all the more bitterly to resist the law, to harry the plebs, and to assail the tribunes as if in actual warfare. The accuser permitted the defendant to storm, and to fan the flames of popular resentment, while furnishing fresh materials for the charges which he intended to bring against him; meanwhile he continued to urge the law, not so much from any hope of carrying it as to provoke Caeso to recklessness. In these circumstances it was Caeso alone, as being a suspected character, who got all the blame for many a rash word and act which proceeded from the young aristocrats. Nevertheless the law continued to meet resistance. And Aulus Verginius kept saying to the plebeians: I suppose you see now, Quirites, that you cannot at the same time have Caeso for a fellow-citizen and obtain the law you desire? And yet why do I say law It is liberty he is thwarting; in all the Tarquinian house was no such arrogance. Wait till this man becomes consul or dictator, whom you see lording it over us while a private citizen, by virtue of his strength and impudence! There were many who agreed with him; they complained of the beatings they had received, and freely urged the tribune to see the business through. The day of the trial now drew near, and it was clearly the general opinion that liberty depended on Caeso's condemnation. Then at last he was obliged, though greatly disdaining such a course, to sue for the support of individuals. He was accompanied by his friends, the chief men of the state. Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, who had thrice been consul, rehearsed the many honours which had come to himself and his family, and declared that neither in the Quinctian clan nor in the Roman state had there ever been such native qualities, so early ripening into manly worth; Caeso had been his best soldier, and had often fought under his own eyes. Spurius Furius testified that Caeso had been sent to him by Quinctius Capitolinus, and had come to his aid when he was in a dangerous plight; that there was no single person whose services he considered to have been more effectual in saving the day. Lucius Lucretius, the consul of the year before, in the splendour of his new-won renown, shared his glory with Caeso, told of the young man's combats, and recounted his wonderful exploits on raids or in the field of battle; he earnestly advised the people to prefer that a distinguished youth, endowed with every advantage of nature and of fortune, and sure to be an important factor in the affairs of any state which he might join, should rather be their own than the citizen of another nation. Those qualities in him which gave offence, impetuosity and rashness, were diminishing each day, as he grew older: that in which he was deficient, namely prudence, was daily increasing. They should suffer a man of his greatnesshis worth maturing as he outlived his faults — to grow old in the possession of his citizenship. The young man's father, Lucius Quinctius, surnamed Cincinnatus, was among his advocates. He did not dwell on Caeso's praises, lest he should add to his unpopularity; but, craving indulgence for his errors and his youth, he begged them to acquit the son as a favour to the father, who had offended no man either in word or deed. But some turned away from the petitioner, through either embarrassment or fear; while others complained of the injuries which Caeso had inflicted on themselves or their friends, and showed by their harsh replies how they meant to vote. There was one charge, besides the general dislike of him, which bore hard upon the accused. Marcus Volscius Fictor, who had been a tribune of the plebs a few years before, had certified that shortly after the epidemic had been in the City he had fallen in with a band of young men swaggering through the Subura. There a brawl had arisen, and his elder brother, who had not yet fully recovered from the disease, had been felled by a blow from Caeso's fist; he had been picked up halfalive and carried home, and his death, Volscius considered, had resulted from this hurt; yet under the consuls of previous years he had been unable to avenge that wicked crime. As Volscius shouted out this story, men became so excited that Caeso had nearly perished by the fury of the people. Verginius gave orders to seize the fellow and throw him into prison. The patricians resisted force with force. Titus Quinctius cried out that a man who had been charged with a capital crime and whose day of trial was at hand ought not to suffer violence, uncondemned and unheard. The tribune answered that he did not propose to punish him uncondemned, but that he should keep him in prison notwithstanding, till the day of trial, that the Roman People might have it in their power to punish a homicide. The other tribunes, on being appealed to, asserted by a compromise their prerogative of protection: they forbade the imprisonment of the accused, but declared it to be their pleasure that he be produced for trial, and that money be pledged to the people in the event of a failure to produce him. How great a sum was proper to be guaranteed was a doubtful point; it was referred to the senate, and Caeso was detained in custody till the Fathers could be consulted. They voted that sureties should be furnished, and fixed the responsibility of one surety at 3,000 asses; how many sureties should be given they left the tribunes to determine. They decided on ten, and with this number of sureties the accuser admitted the accused to bail. Caeso was the first that ever gave sureties to the people. Being allowed to leave the Forum, he departed that night and went into exile amongst the Etruscans. On the day of trial, when it was pleaded that he had gone into voluntary exile, Verginius nevertheless attempted to hold the comitia, but an appeal was taken to his colleagues, who dismissed the assembly. The money was exacted from Caeso's father without pity, so that he was obliged to sell all that he had and live for some time on the other side of the Tiber, like one banished, in a certain lonely hovel. This trial and the promulgation of the law kept the citizens in a turmoil: from foreign wars there was a respite. The tribunes, assuming that the rebuff sustained by the patricians in Caeso's exile had given themselves the victory, believed the law to be as good as passed; and so far as the older senators were concerned, they had indeed relinquished their grasp upon the government; but the juniors, especially those who had been of Caeso's fellowship, grew more bitter against the plebs, and their courage ran as high as ever. Yet they greatly promoted their cause by tempering their fury with a kind of moderation. At the first attempt after Caeso's exile to pass the law, they were organized and ready, and fell upon the tribunes with a great army of clients, as soon as the tribunes gave them an excuse by attempting to remove them; in such wise that no single patrician came off with any conspicuous share of glory or unpopularity, and the plebeians complained that a thousand Caesos had sprung up in the place of one. During the intervening days on which the tribunes took no action about the law, nothing could have been more peaceable or quiet than these same youths. They would salute plebeians courteously, converse with them, invite them to their houses, assist them in the courts, and permit the tribunes themselves to hold their other assemblies without interruption. They never displayed arrogance towards any one, either openly or in private, except when the law came up; at other times they were democratic. By avoiding so much as an offensive word, to say nothing of any sort of violence, they managed little by little, with gentleness and tact, to disarm the hostility of the plebs. By such arts the law was evaded for an entire year. And yet not only did the tribunes carry through their other measures without opposition, but they were even re-elected for the following twelvemonth. The state was less distracted when the consuls Gaius Claudius, the son of Appius, and Publius Valerius Publicola assumed control. No new difficulty had come in with the new year; anxiety to pass the law on the one side, and on the other the dread of having to accept it, occupied the thoughts of the citizens. The more the younger patricians tried to ingratiate themselves with the plebs, the more sharply were they opposed by the tribunes, who endeavoured by bringing charges against their adversaries to make the plebeians suspect them: A conspiracy had been formed; Caeso was in Rome; plans had been laid to kill the tribunes and massacre the plebs; the elder patricians had intrusted the younger men with the task of abolishing the tribunician power from the commonwealth, that the state might have the same aspect it had worn before the occupation of the Sacred Mount. Also men feared the Volsci and Aequi, whose attack was by this time almost a regular and stated custom of annual recurrence; and a new and unexpected danger sprang up nearer home. Exiles and slaves to the number of twenty-five hundred, led by Appius Herdonius, the Sabine, came by night and seized the Capitol and the Citadel. They at once put to the sword those in the Citadel who refused to conspire and take up arms with them. Some escaped in the confusion and ran down terror-stricken into the Forum. Alternating cries were heard, To arms! and The enemy is in the City! The consuls were afraid either to arm the plebs or to leave them unarmed, not knowing whence this sudden attack upon the City had come, whether from without or from within, from the hatred of the plebs or the treachery of slaves. They tried to still the uproar, and sometimes by their efforts made it the greater; for the trembling, panic-stricken multitude could not be controlled by authority. Nevertheless they gave out arms, not to everybody, but only so far as to insure, in the uncertainty regarding their foe, that there should be a fairly dependable defence for any emergency. Filled with concern, and wondering who their enemy was and what his numbers, they employed the rest of the night in disposing pickets at suitable points throughout the City. Then came daylight and disclosed the nature of the war and its leader. From the Capitol Herdonius was calling the slaves to freedom; he had undertaken, he said, the cause of all the wretched, that he might bring back to their native land the exiles who had been wrongfully expelled, and release the slaves from their heavy yoke; he had rather this were done with the approval of the Roman people: if there were no hope in that quarter, he would call in the Volsci and the Aequi and leave no desperate measure unattempted. The situation became clearer to the senators and the consuls. Still, besides the dangers with which they were publicly threatened, they were afraid that this might be a ruse of the Veientes or the Sabines, and that while there were so many enemies within the City, Sabine and Etruscan levies might presently combine for an invasion; or again that their perpetual foes, the Volsci and Aequi, might come, not as before to lay waste their fields, but to the City, which they would regard as already partly captured. Men's fears were many and various; above all the rest stood out their dread of the slaves. Everybody suspected that he had an enemy in his own household, whom it was safe neither to trust, nor, from want of confidence, to refuse to trust, lest his hostility should be intensified; and it seemed hardly possible that even co-operation between the classes should arrest the danger. So greatly did other evils overtop and threaten to engulf them that no one feared the tribunes or the plebeians; that seemed a milder mischief, and springing up, as it always did, when other troubles were quieted, appeared now to have been lulled to sleep by the foreign peril. But in fact it bore down almost more heavily than anything else upon their sinking fortunes. For so frenzied were the tribunes that they asserted it was no war which had taken possession of the Capitol, but an idle mimicry of war, got up to divert the minds of the plebeians from thinking about the law; the patricians' friends and retainers would depart, when the passing of the law showed them how useless had been their insurrection, even more silently than they had come. They then convened an assembly to carry the measure through, having called the people away from their service as soldiers. Meantime the consuls were holding a meeting of the senate, where more fear of the tribunes was manifested than the night-attack of the enemy had caused. On being informed that the men were laying down their arms and quitting their posts, Publius Valerius left his colleague to keep the senate together, and hurrying from the Curia sought out the tribunes in their meeting-place. What means this, tribunes? he exclaimed, Are you going to overturn the state under the leadership and auspices of Appius Herdonius? Has he who could not arouse the slaves been so successful in corrupting you? With the enemy over your heads can you choose to quit your arms and legislate? Then, turning to the crowd, he continued: ( If you feel no concern, Quirites, for your City, or for yourselves, yet fear your gods, whom the enemy hold captive. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Queen Juno, and Minerva, and the other gods and goddesses, are beleaguered; a camp of slaves is in possession of the tutelary deities of your country; does this seem to you a healthy polity? All these foes are not merely within our walls, but in the Citadel, above the Forum and the Curia; the people meanwhile are assembled in the Forum, and in the Curia sits the senate; as when peace reigns supreme, the senator gives voice to his opinion, the other Quirites vote. Should not every patrician and plebeian, the consuls, the tribunes, gods, and men, all have drawn the sword and helped; have rushed upon the Capitol; have brought liberty and peace to that most august house of Jupiter Optimus Maximus? Father Romulus, grant thou to thy descendants that spirit in which thou didst aforetime regain thy Citadel from these same Sabines, when they had captured it with gold; bid them advance by that road where thou didst lead, and thy army followed. Lo, I the consul will be the first, so far as mortal can emulate a god, to follow in thy footsteps! He ended by announcing that he drew his sword and called to arms all the Quirites; if any hindered, he should no longer remember consular authority, nor tribunician power, nor the guarantees of sanctity; whoever the man, wherever he might be, —on the Capitol, in the Forum, —he should hold him a public enemy. Since the tribunes forbade them to arm against Appius Herdonius, let them order an attack on Publius Valerius the consul; he would not fear to deal with tribunes as the founder of his family had dealt with kings. It was evident that there would soon be an appeal to force, and that the enemy would be afforded the spectacle of mutiny among the Romans. 'Yet it was equally impossible for the law to be carried and for the consul to go up into the Capitol. Night put an end to the struggle. The tribunes retired as darkness fell, fearing the armed strength of the consuls. When the instigators of insurrection were once out of the way, the Fathers went about among the plebs, and mingling with the different groups, talked to them in a strain adapted to the crisis. They warned them to have a care into what straits they brought the nation: It was not between patricians and plebeians that the conflict lay; patricians and plebeians alike, the Citadel of the City, the temples of the gods, and the guardian deities of the state and of private citizens, were being surrendered to enemies. Such were the means employed in the Forum to allay dissension. Meanwhile the consuls, lest Sabine or Veientine enemies might be afoot, had set out to make the round of the gates and walls. That same night Tusculum received tidings of the capture of the Citadel, the seizure of the Capitol, and the general disorder in the City. Lucius Mamilius was then dictator at Tusculum. He at once convoked the senate; and having introduced the messengers, expressed an earnest conviction that they ought not to wait till ambassadors should come from Rome requesting help; her perilous and critical situation spoke for itself —the gods of their alliance and the obligations of their treaty called on them to act. Heaven would never bestow on them an equal opportunity to earn the gratitude of so powerful and so near a state, by doing it a service. The senate resolved to help. The young men were enrolled, and arms were issued. As they marched towards Rome in the early dawn, the Tusculans, who were seen a long way off, were taken for enemies; it looked like an invasion of the Aequi or the Volsci. When the alarm proved groundless, they were received into the City, and marched in column down into the Forum. There they found Publius Valerius, who had left his colleague to protect the gates and was marshalling his army. The personal influence of the man had prevailed. He had assured the people that when the Capitol should be won back and peace restored in the City, if they would permit him to point out to them the mischief which lurked in the law the tribunes were proposing, he would remember his forefathers and the surname with which he had, as it were, inherited from those forefathers the charge of caring for the people, nor would he interfere with the council of the plebs. Following him as their leader, despite the idle efforts of the tribunes to restrain them, they advanced up the Clivus Capitolinus, accompanied by the troops from Tusculum. It was a contest between the allies and the citizens, which should obtain the honour of recovering the Citadel. The leader of each party urged on his followers. The enemy now began to quake with fear, having no great confidence in anything but their position. As they stood there quaking, the Romans and their allies assailed them. They had already burst into the vestibule of the temple, when Publius Valerius was killed, as he was directing the attack in the van. Publius Volumnius, a former consul, saw him fall. Charging his men to cover up the body, he threw himself into the consul's place. In the ardour and enthusiasm of the soldiers so important an event passed unnoticed; and they had won the victory before they realized that they were fighting without their leader. Many of the exiles stained the temples with their blood; many were taken alive; Herdonius was slain. Thus the Capitol was regained. The captives, according as they were free or slave, paid the penalty appropriate in each case to their condition; the Tusculans were thanked; the Capitol was purged and ceremonially purified. It is said that the plebeians flung their coppers into the consul's house, that he might be given a grander funeral. When peace had been established, the tribunes began to urge the patricians to fulfil the promise made by Publius Valerius; and to urge Gaius Claudius to absolve the manes of his colleague from deceit, and allow the law to be discussed. The consul refused to permit discussion of the law, until he should have accomplished the election of a colleague. These disputes continued up to the time when the comitia met to fill the vacant consulate. In December, thanks to extraordinary zeal on the part of the patricians, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, Caeso's father, was declared consul, to enter upon the office at once. The plebs were filled with dismay at the prospect of a consul incensed against themselves and strong in the favour of the senate, his own worth, and his three sons, none of whom was inferior to Caeso in courage, while they surpassed him in using wisdom and restraint when the need arose. Cincinnatus, having taken up the magistracy, harangued the people incessantly from the tribunal; yet was no more vehement in repressing the plebs than in castigating the senate. It was owing, he declared, to the apathy of that order that the tribunes of the plebs, whose tenure was now become permanent, exercised such a tyranny of speech and accusation as might be expected in a disordered household, but not in the public affairs of the Roman People. With his son Caeso, manhood, steadfastness, and all the qualities which honour youth in war and in civil life had been driven from Rome and put to rout. Garrulous, seditious, sowers of discord, obtaining office —by the most wicked practices —for a second and even a third term, the tribunes led as lawless a life as kings. Did Aulus Verginius, he cried, because he was not in the Capitol, deserve less punishment than Appius Herdonius? Nay, somewhat more, if one were disposed to be fair. Herdonius had one thing to his credit: by professing himself an enemy, he as good as warned you to arm; the other, denying the existence of a war, took away your arms and exposed you unprotected to your slaves and exiles. And did you —without offence to Gaius Claudius and the dead Publius Valerius be it said, —did you carry your standards against the Capitoline Hill before clearing these enemies out of the Forum? I am ashamed in the sight of gods and men. When foes were in the Citadel, foes in the Capitol, when the captain of slaves and exiles, profaning everything, was quartered in the very shrine of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, it was Tusculum —not Rome —where the first sword was drawn. It was a question whether Lucius Mamilius, the Tusculan general, or Publius Valerius and Gaius Claudius, the consuls, would free the Roman Citadel; and we who until then did not allow the Latins to touch their weapons, even in their own defence, though they had an enemy within their borders, had now, unless the Latins had armed of their own free will, been taken captive and destroyed. Is this, tribunes, what you mean by helping the plebs, —to deliver them over unarmed to be slaughtered by the enemy? Why, if the humblest man belonging to your plebs, a part of the people which you have sundered, as it were, from the rest and made a country of your own and a state apart, —if one of these, I say, had announced that his slaves had armed and seized his house, you would have thought yourselves bound to help him; was Jupiter Optimus Maximus, beset by the swords of exiles and slaves, too mean to merit any man's assistance? And do these tribunes demand that they be held sacred and inviolable, in whose eyes the very gods are neither the one nor the other? So! Weighed down with crimes against gods and men you assert that you will carry through your law this year! Then, by Heaven, it was an evil day for the nation when I was chosen consul, far more evil than when Publius Valerius the consul fell, —if indeed you carry it! First of all then, Quirites, he concluded, I and my colleague are resolved to lead the legions against the Volsci and the Aequi. We are somehow fated to enjoy the favour of the gods in larger measure when warring than when at peace. How dangerous these peoples would have been, had they known that the Capitol was seized by exiles, we may more profitably conjecture from the past than ascertain by trying it. The consul's speech had moved the plebs, and the senators took courage, believing that the state was on its feet again. The other consul, more spirited in co-operation than invention, had been quite willing that his colleague should take the lead in initiating such weighty measures; but in carrying them out he claimed for himself a share of the duties of the consulship. Then the tribunes, jeering at what they termed the idle words of Cincinnatus, proceeded to inquire how the consuls were going to lead out an army, when no one would permit them to hold a levy. But we have no need of a levy, said Quinctius, for when Publius Valerius gave arms to the people for the recovery of the Capitol, they all made oath that they would assemble at the bidding of the consul and not depart without his order. We therefore command that all you who took the oath report to-morrow, armed, at Lake Regillus. Whereupon the tribunes, seeking to release the people from their obligation, resorted to a quibble: Quinctius had been a private citizen at the time when they bound themselves by the oath. But there had not yet come about that contempt for the gods which possesses the present generation; nor did everybody seek to construe oaths and laws to suit himself, but rather shaped his own practices by them. Accordingly the tribunes, as there was no prospect of thwarting the design, concerned themselves with retarding the departure; the more so since a story was about that the augurs had been commanded to present themselves at Lake Regillus, there to inaugurate a place where the auspices could be taken and matters brought before the people, to the end that whatever had been enacted at Rome —thanks to the violence of the tribunes —might there be repealed by the comitia; everybody, they said, would vote as the consuls wished; for there was no appeal when one was more than a mile from the City, and the tribunes, if they should come there, would be subjected, amongst the rank and file of the citizens, to the consular authority. These were terrifying rumours, but far the greatest terror that preyed upon their spirits was this, that Quinctius repeatedly declared that he would hold no consular election; the disease of the commonwealth was not one that could be cured by ordinary remedies; the nation needed a dictator, that whoever went about to disturb the state might learn that the dictatorship knew no appeal. The senate was in the Capitol. Thither came the tribunes with the troubled plebs. The multitude loudly besought protection, now of the consuls, now of the senators. Yet they could not move the consul from his purpose, until the tribunes had promised that they would submit to the authority of the Fathers. The consul then brought up the demands of the tribunes and the plebs, and the senate resolved that neither should the tribunes proceed with the law that year, nor the consuls lead the army out of the City; that as regarded the future, it was the sense of the senate that for magistrates to succeed themselves and for the same tribunes to be re-elected was contrary to the general welfare. The consuls acquiesced in the authority of the Fathers; the tribunes, in spite of the protests of the consuls, were returned to office. Then the patricians also, that they might yield in no respect to the plebs, would themselves have re-elected Lucius Quinctius consul. At no time during the entire year did the consul express himself with greater vehemence. Can I wonder, he cried, if your influence with the people, Conscript Fathers, is unavailing? You yourselves impair it, when, because the people have disregarded the senate's resolution regarding successive terms, you desire to disregard it yourselves, that you may not lag behind the multitude in rashness; as if to be more inconstant and more lawless were to possess more power in the state. For surely it is more fickle and light-minded to nullify one's own decrees and resolutions, than those of others. Pattern yourselves, Conscript Fathers, after the thoughtless crowd; and do you, who ought to set others an example, err rather by the example of those others, than permit them to follow yours and do right. But I, with your leave, will not imitate the tribunes, nor suffer myself to be named consul against the senate's resolution. As for you, Gaius Claudius, I urge that you too restrain the Roman People from this lawlessness; and for my own part be assured I shall not feel that your action has stood in the way of my election, but that my renown has gained by my refusal of the office, and that the odium which threatened me from its continuation has been removed. They then united in an edict that no one should vote for Lucius Quinctius for consul; if any man should do so they would disregard his vote. The consuls elected were Quintus Fabius Vibulanus (for the third time) and Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis. The census was taken that year, but there were scruples against performing the lustral sacrifice, on account of the seizure of the Capitol and the slaying of the consul. The consulship of Quintus Fabius and Lucius Cornelius was a stormy one from the very beginning of the year. The tribunes egged on the plebs; the Latins and the Hernici reported that a great attack was being launched by the Volsci and the Aequi, and that Volscian levies were already at Antium. There was much apprehension too lest the colony itself should revolt; and the tribunes were hardly prevailed upon to allow the war to have precedence. Then the consuls divided the commands, appointing Fabius to take the legions to Antium, and Cornelius to defend Rome, lest some part of the enemy, in accordance with the Aequian custom, should make a foray. The Hernici and the Latins were bidden to furnish soldiers, as by treaty bound; two-thirds of the army were allies, one-third citizens. When the allies had reported on the appointed day, the consul encamped outside the Porta Capena. Thence, after purifying the army, he set out for Antium, and took up a position at no great distance from the town and the standing camp of the enemy. There the Volsci, not daring to give battle —for the Aequian army had not yet come up —sought to protect themselves, without fighting, behind their rampart. The next day Fabius, instead of mingling allies and citizens in one line of battle, drew up the three nations in three separate armies, about the enemy's works, taking the centre himself with the Roman legions. He then commanded them all to wait for the signal, that the allies might act with the citizens in beginning the fight, and in retreating, if he should sound the recall. He also stationed the cavalry belonging to each division behind its first line. Advancing thus in three sections he surrounded the camp, and attacking sharply on every side, dislodged the Volsci, who were unable to sustain his charge, from their intrenchments. Passing over these, he drove the frightened rabble before him in one direction and cleared the camp of them. As they dispersed in flight, the cavalry, who had found it difficult to surmount the rampart and had hitherto been mere spectators of the battle, having now a clear field before them played their part in the victory by cutting off the fugitives. Great was the slaughter inflicted on the enemy as they attempted to escape, both in the camp and outside the works; but the booty was still greater, since they had barely been able to carry away their arms. If the forests had not covered the flight, their army would have been utterly destroyed. While this battle was being fought near Antium, the Aequi had sent forward the flower of their troops, and by a surprise attack at night, had captured the Tusculan citadel. The rest of their army they stationed at a short distance from the walls of the town, in order to induce the enemy to extend his forces. The news of these events being speedily carried to Rome and thence to the camp at Antium, had the same effect upon the Romans as if it had been announced that the Capitol was taken, — so fresh in their recollection was the service done them by the Tusculans, and so strongly did the similarity of the risk which their allies now ran seem to call for repayment of the assistance they had given. Letting everything else go, Fabius quickly conveyed the plunder of the camp to Antium, and leaving there a moderate garrison, hastened by forced marches to Tusculum. The soldiers were allowed to take nothing but their arms and such bread as happened to be at hand; supplies were sent them from Rome by the consul Cornelius. The fighting at Tusculum lasted for some months. With a part of his army the consul laid siege to the camp of the Aequi; a part he had given to the Tusculans to use in recovering the citadel. The place could never be entered by assault; but the enemy were finally driven out by hunger. Having thus reduced them to extremities, the Tusculans took away their arms, and stripping them to the tunic, sent them under the yoke. As they were ignominiously fleeing homeward, the Roman consul overtook them on Mount Algidus, and slew them, every man. The victor led his army back to Columen —this is the name of a place —and went into camp. The other consul too, now that the defeat of the enemy had removed all danger from the walls of Rome, set out himself from the City. Thus at two points the consuls invaded the enemy's borders, and with keen rivalry devastated the lands of the Volsci on the one hand, and those of the Aequi on the other. I find in a good many writers that the Antiates revolted that same year; and that Lucius Cornelius the consul conducted the war and took the town. I should not venture to affirm it for a certainty, since there is no mention of the matter in the older historians. This war was no sooner finished, than the patricians were alarmed by one waged against them at home, by the tribunes, who cried out that the army was dishonestly kept afield —a trick intended to frustrate the passage of the law; which, notwithstanding, they had undertaken and proposed to carry through. Still, Lucius Lucretius, the prefect of the City, obtained the postponement of any action by the tribunes until the consuls should have come. There had also arisen a new cause for disquiet. Aulus Cornelius and Quintus Servilius, the quaestors, had summoned Marcus Volscius to trial, on the charge that he had been guilty of undoubted perjury against Caeso. For it was becoming generally known, from many witnesses, first, that the brother of Volscius after having once fallen ill had not only never appeared in public, but had not even got up from his sick-bed, where he had died of a wasting disease which lasted many months; and secondly, that within the period to which Volscius, in his testimony, had referred the crime, Caeso had not been seen in Rome; for those who had served with him affirmed that he had often during that time been in their company at the front, without taking any furlough. To prove this contention, many persons offered Volscius to refer the question of fact to a private arbitrator. Since he did not dare proceed to arbitration, all these things, pointing in one direction, made the condemnation of Volscius as certain as that of Caeso had been made by Volscius's evidence. The tribunes delayed matters by refusing to allow the quaestors to hold an assembly for his trial until one should first have been held to consider the law. So both affairs dragged on till the arrival of the consuls. When they had entered the City in triumph with their victorious army, nothing was said about the law, and many people thought the tribunes had been daunted. But the tribunes were seeking a fourth term of office —for the end of the year was now at hand —and had diverted their efforts from the law to the contest for the election. And though the consuls strove quite as vehemently against the re-election of the incumbents to the tribuneship, as if a law were being urged which had been promulgated to curtail their own majesty, the contest resulted in victory for the tribunes. That same year the Aequi sought and obtained peace. The census, which had been begun the year before, was completed; and this, they say, was the tenth lustral sacrifice performed since the founding of the City. There were enrolled 117,319 citizens. This year the consuls won great renown, at home and in the field; not only had they brought about peace with other nations, but at home also, though the state was not yet harmonious, yet it was less troubled than at other times. Lucius Minucius and Gaius Nautius were chosen to be the next consuls, and inherited the two causes left over from the preceding year. As before, the consuls obstructed the passage of the law, and the tribunes the trial of Volscius; but the new quaestors were men of superior force and influence. Marcus Valerius, son of Manius, and grandson of Volesus, shared the magistracy with Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, who had thrice been consul. Capitolinus, since it was beyond his power to restore Caeso to the Quinctian family and the greatest of her young men to the state, waged war, as justice and loyalty demanded, on the false witness who had deprived an innocent man of the power to plead his cause. Verginius was the most active amongst the tribunes in working for the law. The consuls were allowed two months' time to inspect the measure, that having explained to the people what hidden mischief was being proposed they might then permit them to vote. The granting of this breathing-space brought tranquillity to the City. But the Aequi did not suffer it to remain long at rest; breaking the treaty which they had made with the Romans the year before, they intrusted the command of their forces to Cloelius Gracchus, at that time by far the most eminent man in their state. Under this man's leadership they invaded the territory of Labici, and from there the territory of Tusculum, with fire and sword, and, loaded with booty, pitched their camp on Algidus. To this camp came Quintus Fabius, Publius Volumnius, and Aulus Postumius, envoys from Rome, to complain of the wrongs done and demand restitution, as provided in the treaty. The Aequian general bade them recite the message of the Roman senate to the oak, saying that he would meantime attend to other matters. (The oak, a mighty tree, overhung head-quarters and with its dense shade afforded a cool resting-place.) Thereupon one of the envoys said, as he departed, Let both this sacred oak and whatever gods there are hear that the treaty has been broken by you; and let them attend now to our complaints and presently support our arms, when we shall avenge the simultaneous violation of the rights of gods and men. On the return of the envoys to Rome, the senate ordered one consul to lead an army to Algidus, against Gracchus, and to the other assigned the task of devastating the territories of the Aequi. The tribunes sought in their usual fashion to prevent the levy, and might perhaps have held out against it to the end; but suddenly a fresh alarm supervened. A great body of Sabines made a hostile incursion almost to the walls of Rome, wasting the fields and terrifying the citizens. Thereupon the plebeians willingly enlisted, and despite the unavailing protests of the tribunes, two large armies were enrolled. One of these Nautius led against the Sabines. Pitching his camp at Eretum, lie sent out little expeditions, chiefly nocturnal raiding parties, and so liberally repaid on their own fields the depredations of the Sabines, that the Roman territories in comparison seemed scarcely to have been touched by war. Minucius had neither the same good fortune nor equal spirit in conducting his campaign; for he encamped not far from the enemy, and without having suffered any considerable defeat, kept timidly within his breastworks. When the enemy perceived this, their audacity was heightened, as is usually the case, by their opponents' fear, and they attacked the camp by night. Failing to accomplish anything by open force, they next day surrounded the place with earthworks; but before these could be thrown up on every side of the camp and so shut off all egress, five horsemen were sent out through the enemy's outposts and carried to Rome the news that the consul and his army were beleaguered. Nothing more surprising or unlooked-for could have happened. And so the alarm and consternation were as great as if it had been the City, not the camp, which the enemy were investing. They sent for the consul Nautius; but deeming him unequal to their defence, and resolving to have a dictator to restore their shattered fortunes, they agreed unanimously on the nomination of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. What followed merits the attention of those who despise all human qualities in comparison with riches, and think there is no room for great honours or for worth but amidst a profusion of wealth. The sole hope of the empire of the Roman People, Lucius Quinctius, cultivated a field of some four acres across the Tiber, now known as the Quinctian Meadows, directly opposite the place where the dockyards are at present. There he was found by the representatives of the state. Whether bending over his spade as he dug a ditch, or ploughing, he was, at all events, as everybody agrees, intent upon some rustic task. After they had exchanged greetings with him, they asked him to put on his toga, to hear (and might good come of it to himself and the republic!) the mandates of the senate. In amazement he cried, Is all well? and bade his wife Racilia quickly fetch out his toga from the hut. When he had put it on, after wiping off the dust and sweat, and came forth to the envoys, they hailed him Dictator, congratulated him, and summoned him to the City, explaining the alarming situation of the army. A boat was waiting for him, provided by the state; and as he reached the other side his three sons came out to receive him; after them came his other kinsmen and friends; and after them the greater part of the senate. Attended by this throng and preceded by his lictors he was escorted to his house. The plebeians too were gathered in great numbers; but they were by no means so rejoiced at the sight of Quinctius, because they thought that not only was his authority excessive, but that the man was even more dangerous than the authority itself. That night nothing more was done than to keep a watch in the City. On the following day the dictator, coming before dawn into the Forum, named as his master of the horse Lucius Tarquitius, a man of patrician birth, but one who had served as a foot-soldier because of poverty, though in war he had been esteemed by far the best of the Roman youth. With his master of the horse the dictator appeared before the people; proclamed a suspension of the courts; ordered the shops to be closed all over the City; and forbade anybody to engage in any private business. He then commanded all those who were of military age to come armed, before sunset, to the Campus Martius, bringing each enough bread to last five days, and twelve stakes; those who were too old for war he ordered to prepare food for their neighbours who were soldiers, while the latter were getting their arms in order and looking for stakes. So the young men ran this way and that in search of stakes, and every one took them from the nearest source, nor was anyone interfered with; and all presented themselves promptly as the dictator had commanded. Then, having drawn up their column so as to be ready for fighting as well as for marching, if need were, the dictator himself led the legions, the master of the horse his cavalry. In each division were spoken such words of encouragement as the occasion called for: Let them mend their pace; there was need of speed, that they might reach the enemy's camp in the night; a consul and a Roman army were being besieged, and it was now the third day of their investment; what each night or day might bring forth was uncertain; a single instant was often the turning-point of a great event. The soldiers also, in complaisance to their commanders, cried out to one another, Make haste, standard-bearer! Follow me, men! At midnight they came to Algidus, and perceiving that they were now close to the enemy, halted. Then the dictator, having ridden about and observed, as well as he could for the night, the extent of the camp and its shape, directed the military tribunes to make the soldiers throw down their packs in one place, and return, with arms and stakes, to their proper ranks. They did as he commanded. Then, keeping the order of the march, he led out the whole army in a long column and surrounded the enemy's camp, commanding that at a given signal the troops should all raise a shout, and that after shouting every man should dig a trench in front of his own position and erect a palisade. The signal followed close on the announcement. The men did as they had been bidden. Their cheer resounded on all sides of the enemy, and passing over their camp, penetrated that of the consul; in the one it inspired panic, in the other great rejoicing. The Romans, congratulating one another that it was their fellow-citizens who shouted, and that help was at hand, on their own part began to threaten the enemy with attacks from their pickets and outposts. The consul said that they ought to act without delay; the shout not only signified that their friends were come, but that they had begun to fight; and it would be surprising if they were not already assailing the enemy's camp from without. He accordingly bade his men stand to arms and follow him. It was night when they entered the battle; with a cheer they gave the legions of the dictator to know that on their side as well the issue had been joined. The Aequi were already preparing to resist the work of circumvallation, when the attack was begun upon their inner line. Lest a sortie should be made through the midst of their camp, they turned their backs on those who were entrenching, and faced the attacking forces; and, leaving the others free to work all night, they fought till break of day with the soldiers of the consul. At early dawn they had already been shut in by the dictator's rampart, and were scarcely maintaining the battle against one army. Then the troops of Quinctius, who had at once, on completing the works, resumed their weapons, assailed the rampart of the Aequi. Here was a new battle on their hands, and the other not yet in the least abated. At this, hard-driven by a double danger, they turned from fighting to entreaties, and on the one hand implored the dictator, on the other the consul, not to make the victory a massacre, but to take their arms and let them go. The consul referred them to the dictator, who in his anger added ignominy to their surrender. He commanded that Cloelius Gracchus, their commander, and the other captains, be brought to him in chains, and that the town of Corbio be evacuated. He said that he did not require the blood of the Aequi; they might go; but, that they might at last be forced to confess that their nation had been defeated and subdued, they should pass beneath the yoke as they departed. A yoke was fashioned of three spears, two being fixed in the ground and the third laid across them and made fast. Under this yoke the dictator sent the Aequi. Having taken possession of the enemy's camp, which abounded in all sorts of supplies —for he had sent them out with nothing but their tunics —he gave all the booty to his own troops exclusively, rebuking the consular army and the consul himself in these terms: You shall have no share, soldiers, in the spoils of that enemy to whom you almost fell a spoil; and you, Lucius Minucius, until you begin to have the spirit of a consul, shall command these legions as my lieutenant. So Minucius abdicated the consulship, and remained, as he was ordered to do, with the army. But so tame and submissive was the temper of this army now towards a better commander, that, considering rather the benefit they had received at his hands than the humiliation, they voted the dictator a golden chaplet of a pound in weight, and when he departed, saluted him as their protector. At Rome the senate, being convened by Quintus Fabius, the prefect of the City, commanded Quinctius to enter the gates in triumph, with the troops that accompanied him. Before his chariot were led the generals of the enemy; the military standards were borne on ahead; after them came the soldiers, laden with booty. It is said that tables were spread before all the houses, and the troops, feasting as they marched, with songs of triumph and the customary jokes, followed the chariot like revellers. On that day Lucius Mamilius the Tusculan was granted citizenship, with the approval of all. Cincinnatus would at once have resigned his office, had not the trial of Marcus Volscius, the false witness, caused him to delay. The awe in which the tribunes held the dictator prevented them from interfering with the trial. Volscius was condemned and went into exile at Lanuvium. On the sixteenth day Quinctius surrendered the dictatorship which he had received for six months. During that period the consul Nautius fought a successful engagement at Eretum with the Sabines, who in addition to the devastation of their fields now suffered this new disaster. Fabius was sent to Mount Algidus to succeed Minucius. At the close of the year there was some agitation for the law on the part of the tribunes; but since two armies were abroad, the senators insisted that no proposal should be laid before the people; the plebs were successful in electing the same tribunes for the fifth time. It is said that wolves were seen on the Capitol, pursued by dogs; because of which prodigy the Capitol was purified. Such were the events of this year. The next consuls were Quintus Minucius and Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, At the beginning of the year, though foreign relations were peaceful, at home there were dissensions, inspired by the same tribunes and the same law; and they would have proceeded to even greater lengths —so inflamed were men's passions —had it not been announced, as if designedly, that the garrison at Corbio had perished in a night-attack made by the Aequi. The consuls convoked the senate, and were directed to make a summary levy and lead the army to Mount Algidus. From that moment the quarrel over the law was laid aside, and a fresh dispute arose, concerning the levy; in this consular authority was in a fair way to be defeated, by the help of the tribunes, when a new alarm was reported: that a Sabine army bent on pillage had descended upon the Roman fields, and was thence approaching the City. This was such staggering news that the tribunes permitted the enrolment of troops; yet not without having obtained an agreement that since they had themselves been baffled for five years, and the existing tribunate was an insufficient protection to the plebs, ten tribunes should in future be elected. To this the patricians were compelled to agree, only stipulating that they should not thereafter see the same men tribunes. The tribunician election was held immediately, lest when the war was over this promise too might be broken, as the others had been. In the thirty-sixth year from the first plebeian tribunes ten men were elected, two from each class, and it was enacted that they should be chosen thus thereafter. The levy was then held, and Minucius marched against the Sabines, but did not find the enemy. Horatius, after the Aequi, having put the garrison at Corbio to the sword, had also captured Ortona, fought a battle with them on Mount Algidus, killed many men, and drove off the enemy, not only from Algidus, but from Corbio and Ortona. Corbio he razed because of its betrayal of the garrison. Marcus Valerius and Spurius Verginius succeeded to the consulship. Affairs were quiet both at home and abroad; but there was a shortage in the corn-supply, due to excessive rains. A law was passed opening up the Aventine to settlement. The same tribunes of the plebs were returned; and in the following year, when Titus Romilius and Gaius Veturius were consuls, they took occasion to urge the law in all their speeches: They were ashamed, they said, of the futile increase in their numbers, if this measure was to lie disregarded during their own two years of office, precisely as it had done throughout the five preceding years. Just when this agitation was at its height, there came a disquieting report from Tusculum that the Aequi were in Tusculan territory. Men were ashamed, in view of the recent service of that nation, to delay in sending aid. Both 103 consuls were dispatched with an army; and finding the enemy on their usual ground, Mount Algidus, they there engaged them. Above seven thousand of the enemy were slain; the rest were put to flight; and immense spoils were taken. These the consuls sold, owing to the impoverished condition of the treasury. Nevertheless, their action made them unpopular with the army, and it also furnished the tribunes with an occasion for impeaching the consuls before the plebs. Accordingly when they laid down their office and Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius became consuls, they were brought to trial; Romilius by Gaius Calvius Cicero, a plebeian tribune, Veturius by Lucius Alienus, an aedile of the plebs. Both were condemned, greatly to the indignation of the patricians; Romilius was fined 10,000 asses, Veturius 15,000. And yet this disaster to their predecessors did not diminish the energy of the new consuls; they said that it was possible that they should themselves be condemned, but that it was not possible that the plebs and the tribunes should carry their law. Then the tribunes, discarding the law, which, in the time it had been before the people, had lost its vitality, began to treat more moderately with the patricians: Let them at last put an end, they said, to these disputes; if the plebeian measure were not agreeable to them, let them permit framers of laws to be appointed jointly from both the plebs and the nobility, that they might propose measures which should be advantageous to both sides, and secure equal liberty. The patricians did not reject the principle; but they declared that no one should propose laws unless he were a patrician. Since they were agreed in regard to the laws, and only differed about the mover, they sent Spurius Postumius Albus, Aulus Manlius, and Publius Sulpicius Camerinus on a mission to Athens, with orders to copy the famous laws of Solon, and acquaint themselves with the institutions, customs, and laws of the other Greek states. No foreign wars disturbed the quiet of that year; but even more quiet was the year that followed, when Publius Curiatius and Sextus Quinctilius were consuls, for the tribunes preserved an unbroken silence. This was due in the first place to their waiting for the commissioners who had gone to Athens, and for the foreign laws; in the second place two terrible misfortunes had come at the same time, famine and pestilence, baneful alike to men and beasts. The fields were left untenanted; the City was emptied by incessant funerals; many distinguished families were in mourning. The flamen of Quirinus, Servius Cornelius, died, and the augur Gaius Horatius Pulvillus, in whose place the augurs elected Gaius Veturius, the more eagerly because of his condemnation by the plebs. Death took the consul Quinctilius, and four tribunes of the plebs. The numerous losses made it a gloomy year; but Rome's enemies did not molest her. The next consuls were Gaius Menenius and Publius Sestius Capitolinus. In this year likewise there was no foreign war, but disturbances arose at home. The commissioners had now returned with the laws of Athens. The tribunes were therefore the more insistent that a beginning should be made at last towards codification. It was resolved to appoint decemvirs, subject to no appeal, and to have no other magistrates for that year. Whether plebeians should be permitted a share in the work was for some time disputed; in the end they yielded to the patricians, only bargaining that the Icilian law about the Aventine and the other sacred laws should not be abrogated. In the three hundred and second year from the founding of Rome the form of the polity was changed again, with the transfer of supreme authority from consuls to decemvirs, even as before it had passed from kings to consuls. It was not so remarkable a change, because it did not last long. For the luxuriant beginnings of this magistracy took on too rank a growth; and in consequence it soon died down, and the custom was resumed of entrusting to two men the name and authority of consuls. The decemvirs chosen were Appius Claudius, Titus Genucius, Publius Sestius, Lucius Veturius, Gaius Julius, Aulus Manlius, Publius Sulpicius, Publius Curiatius, Titus Romilius, and Spurius Postumius. To Claudius and Genucius, the consuls-elect for that year, the new office was given in compensation for the other; and to Sestius, one of the consuls of the year before, because he had brought the measure before the senate against his colleague's will. Next to these were honoured the three envoys who had gone to Athens, not only that the office might serve to reward them for so distant a mission, but also in the belief that their knowledge of foreign laws would be useful in compiling a new code. The other four filled up the number. It is said that old men were chosen for the last places, that they might make a less vigorous opposition to the measures proposed by the rest. The guiding hand in the whole magistracy was that of Appius, thanks to the favour of the plebs; and so novel a character had he assumed, that from being a harsh and cruel persecutor of the plebs, he came out all at once as the people's friend, and caught at every breath of popularity. Sitting each one day in ten they administered justice to the people. On that day he who presided in court had twelve fasces; his nine colleagues were each attended by a single orderly. And while they maintained an unparalleled harmony amongst themselves —a unanimity sometimes prejudicial to the governed, —they treated others with the utmost fairness. As proof of their moderation, it will suffice to note a single example. Though they had been chosen to a magistracy from which there was no appeal, yet when a corpse was found buried in the house of Publius Sestius, a patrician, and produced before the assembly, and the man's guilt was as clear as it was heinous, Gaius Julius the decemvir summoned Sestius to trial, and appeared before the people to prosecute a man of whose guilt he was the lawful judge, surrendering his own prerogative that he might add to the liberty of the people what he subtracted from the power of the magistracy. While this prompt justice, as pure as though derived from an oracle, was being meted out impartially by the decemvirs to the highest and the lowest, they were also busily engaged in framing laws. Men's expectations were running high, when they set up ten tables, and summoning the people to assemble, commanded them —with a prayer that the result might be prosperous, favourable, and fortunate, for the commonwealth, for themselves, and for their children —to go and read the proposed statutes. They themselves, they said, so far as the capacities of ten men could forecast the event, had equalized the rights of all, both high and low; but there was greater efficacy in the capacities and counsels of many. Let them consider each single point in their own minds, then discuss it with their fellows, and lastly state in public what excess or shortcoming there was in the several articles; the Roman People should have only such laws as their unanimity might fairly be considered not only to have passed, but to have proposed. When it appeared that the laws had been sufficiently amended, in the light of the opinions that men expressed concerning each separate section, the centuriate comitia met and adopted the Laws of the Ten Tables; which even now, in this great welter of statutes piled one upon another, are the fountain-head of all public and private law. Afterwards the opinion was general that there lacked two tables, by the addition of which a corpus, so to speak, of all the Roman law could be rounded out. The hope of filling this lack made people desirous, when election day drew near, of choosing decemvirs again. The plebs, besides the fact that they hated the name of consul quite as much as that of king, had already ceased to require even the help of the tribunes, since the decemvirs yielded to one another when an appeal was taken. But when the comitia for the election of decemvirs had been announced to take place in fourand-twenty days, there was a great outburst of canvassing; even the chief men in the state —from fear, I doubt not, that if they left the field this great power might fall into unworthy hands —solicited men's votes and humbly begged for an office which they had themselves opposed with all their influence, from those plebeians with whom they had contended. The risk of losing his position, at his time of life, and after holding the offices he had held, acted as a spur to Appius Claudius. One would not have known whether to reckon him among the decemvirs or the candidates. He was at times more like one who sought a magistracy than like one who exercised it. He vilified the nobles; praised all the most insignificant and low-born candidates; and surrounding himself with former tribunes, like Duillius and Icilius, bustled about the Forum, and through them recommended himself to the plebs; till even his colleagues, who had been singularly devoted to him until then, looked askance at him and wondered what this could mean. It was evident there could be nothing genuine about it; so proud a man would certainly not be affable for nothing; excessive self-abasement and mingling with private citizens were not so much the marks of one who was in haste to retire from office as of one who sought the means of re-election. Open opposition to his desires being more than they dared venture, they endeavoured by a show of complaisance to lessen its intensity; and unanimously appointed him, as their youngest colleague, to preside at the election. This was a trick, that he might be unable to declare himself elected, a thing which none but tribunes of the plebs (and even there the precedent was most vicious) had ever done. But Appius, strange as it may seem, having promised, with a prayer for Heaven's blessing, to convene the comitia, turned the obstacle into an opportunity. He effected by collusion the defeat of the two Quinctii, Capitolinus and Cincinnatus, of his uncle Gaius Claudius, a steadfast champion of the aristocratic cause, and of other citizens of the same exalted rank; and declared the election of decemvirs who were no match for these men in excellence. His own name he announced among the first, a thing which good citizens condemned with as perfect unanimity, now it was done, as they had before believed he would not dare to do it. With him were elected Marcus Cornelius Maluginensis, Marcus Sergius, Lucius Minucius, Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, Quintus Poetelius, Titus Antonius Merenda, Caeso Duillius, Spurius Oppius Cornicen, Manius Rabuleius. Appius now threw off the mask he had been wearing, and began from that moment to live as his true nature prompted him. His new colleagues too he commenced, even before they entered upon office, to fashion after his own character. Every day they met together without witnesses. The tyrannical designs which they there adopted they matured in secret. They now no longer sought to conceal their pride; they were difficult of access, and surly towards those who sought to speak with them. Thus they carried matters until the Ides of May, at that time the traditional date for beginning a term of office. So then, when they had taken up their duties, they signalized the first day of their administration by a terrible threat. For whereas the former decemvirs had kept to the rule that only one should have the fasces, and that this regal emblem should pass from one to another in rotation, so that each should have his turn, they suddenly appeared in public, every man with his twelve fasces. A hundred and twenty lictors crowded the Forum, and before them, bound up in the rods, they carried axes. And indeed the decemvirs explained that there had been no reason for removing the axe, since the office to which they had been chosen was without appeal. They seemed like ten kings; and the terror they inspired, not only in the humblest citizens but in the leaders of the senate, was intensified by the belief that the decemvirs were merely seeking a pretext and an opening for bloodshed, so that if anybody should pronounce a word in praise of liberty, either in the senate or before the people, the rods and axes might instantly be made ready, were it only to frighten the rest. For besides that there was no help in the people, the right of appeal having been taken away, they had further agreed not to interfere with each other's decisions; whereas their predecessors had allowed their judgments to be revised upon appeal to one of their colleagues; and certain cases which might have been held to be within their own competence they had referred to the people. For a brief period the terror was shared equally by all; but little by little its full force began to fall upon the plebs. The patricians were left unmolested; humbler folk were dealt with arbitrarily and cruelly. It was all a question of persons, not of causes, with the decemvirs, since influence held with them the place of right. They concocted their judgments in private, and pronounced them in the Forum. If anybody sought redress from another decemvir, he came away regretting that he had not accepted the decision of the first. Moreover a report had got out, though it was not vouched for, that they had not only conspired for present wrongdoing but had ratified with an oath a secret agreement amongst themselves not to call an election, but by means of a perpetual decemvirate to hold the power they had once for all acquired. The plebeians then fell to searching the countenances of the patricians, and would catch at the breath of freedom in that quarter where they had so feared enslavement as to have reduced the state to its present plight. The leading senators hated the decemvirs and hated the plebs. They could not approve of the things that were being done; still they believed them to be not undeserved. They had no desire to help those who in their greedy rush for liberty had fallen upon servitude, preferring that their wrongs should even be multiplied, that disgust at their actual situation might in the end arouse a longing for the two consuls and the former status of affairs. And now the greater part of the year had passed, and the two tables of laws had been added to the ten of the year before; nor was there any further business to make the decemvirate necessary to the republic, so soon as those statutes too should have been enacted in the centuriate assembly. People were anxiously looking forward to the time when the comitia for the election of consuls should be announced. The plebeians felt only one concern: how were they ever going to restore the tribunician power (their bulwark of liberty) which had been suspended? Meanwhile there was no mention of an election. And the decemvirs, who had at first exhibited themselves to the plebs in the society of former tribunes, because this had been thought a recommendation to the people, had now assumed a retinue of young patricians. Their bands blocked the tribunals. They bullied the plebs and plundered their possessions; for success attended the strong, no matter what they coveted. And now they ceased even to respect a man's person; some they scourged with rods, others they made to feel the axe; and, that cruelty might not go unrequited, they bestowed the victim's property upon his slayer. Corrupted by these wages, the young nobles not only made no stand against wrong-doing, but frankly showed that they preferred licence for themselves to liberty for all. The Ides of May came. Without causing any magistrates to be elected, the decemvirs, now private citizens, appeared in public with no abatement either of the spirit with which they exercised their power or the insignia which proclaimed their office. But this was unmistakable tyranny. Men mourned for liberty as for ever lost; nor did any one arise, or seem likely to do so, in its defence. And not only had the people themselves lost heart; but they had begun to be despised by the neighbouring nations, who could ill brook the existence of imperial power where there was no liberty. The Sabines made an incursion with a large force into Roman territory, which they everywhere laid waste. Having safely driven off their booty, comprising men and beasts, they withdrew their army, which had ranged far and wide, to Eretum. There they established a camp, hoping that the want of harmony at Rome would interfere with the levying of troops. Not only the messengers who came, but the flight of the country-people, who thronged the City, inspired a feeling of dismay. The decemvirs considered what they had best do; for they were left in the lurch by the hatred of the patricians on the one side and of the plebs on the other. Moreover Fortune sent an additional alarm. The Aequi came from another quarter and encamped on Algidus, and from there raided the lands of Tusculum. Tusculan envoys brought tidings of these acts, and besought protection. The fright which this occasioned drove the decemvirs, now that the City was hemmed in between two simultaneous wars, to consult the senate. They ordered the Fathers to be summoned to the Curia, though they were not ignorant how great a storm of unpopularity was brewing: the devastation of the land and the dangers which impended would be laid by everybody at their doors; and this would lead to an attempt being made to abolish their magistracy, unless they presented a united resistance, and by sharply exercising their power upon the few really daring spirits, put a stop to the efforts of the rest. When the crier's voice was heard in the Forum, calling the senators to meet the decemvirs in the Curia, it was like an innovation, so long had they disregarded the custom of consulting the senate, and it aroused the attention of the plebs, who wondered what in the world could have happened, that after so long an interval they should be reviving a forgotten usage; the enemy and the war deserved men's gratitude, if anything whatever was being done which was usual in a free state. Men looked about in every corner of the Forum to discover a senator, and seldom recognized one anywhere; then their glances rested on the Curia and the decemvirs sitting there alone. Meantime the decemvirs themselves explained the Fathers' failure to assemble as owing to the universal detestation of their rule; the commons as due to their having no authority, being private citizens, to convoke the senate: a beginning, it seemed, was already being made towards the recovery of freedom, if the plebs would join with the senate; and if, even as the Fathers were refusing, when summoned, to attend the session, so they, for their part, would reject the levy. Such were the murmurs of the plebs. Of senators there was scarce one in the Forum, and there were but few in the City. In their resentment at the situation they had withdrawn to their farms and were absorbed in their private affairs, disregarding those of the nation; for they felt that they were secure from insult only so far as they removed themselves from contact and association with their tyrannical masters. When on being cited they failed to appear, officers were sent round to their houses, for the double purpose of exacting fines and of ascertaining whether their recalcitrancy were deliberate. They reported that the senators were in the country. This was more pleasing to the decemvirs than if they had announced that the Fathers were in town and repudiated their authority. They commanded them all to be summoned, and proclaimed a meeting of the senate for the following day. This session was somewhat better attended than they had themselves expected. Whereupon the plebs concluded that liberty had been betrayed by the senators, since those who had already gone out of office and were mere private citizens, save for the force they exercised, were obeyed by them as though they had the authority to command. But their obedience in coming to the senate-house was greater, we are told, than their submissiveness in the expression of their views. It is related that Lucius Valerius Potitus, after Appius Claudius had proposed his motion and before the senators were called upon in order for their opinions, demanded leave to speak on the state of the nation; and when the decemvirs tried with threats to prevent his doing so, stirred up a violent commotion by declaring that he would go before the plebs. With equal spirit, it is said, did Marcus Horatius Barbatus enter the dispute, calling them ten Tarquinii, and warning them that the Valerii and the Horatii had been leaders in the expulsion of the kings. Nor was it the name, said he, which had then disgusted men, since by this name Jupiter was duly called; and Romulus, the founder of the City; and the successive kings; and it had even been retained for religious rites as a solemn title. No, it was the pride and violence of the king which men had hated in those days; and if these qualities had then been intolerable in a king, or the son of a king, who would endure them in so many private citizens? Let them beware lest by denying men freedom of speech in the Curia they should set them a-talking outside the Curia as well. He could not see, he continued, how, as a private citizen, he was less entitled to assemble the people for a speech than they were to convene the senate. When they liked they might learn by making the experiment how much stronger indignation was in the vindication of a man's own liberty than was ambition in defence of unjust power. The decemvirs talked of a Sabine war, as if any war were more important to the Roman People than war with those who, though they had been appointed to propose statutes, had left no law in the state; who had done away with elections, with annual magistracies, with the succession of new governors —the only means of equalizing liberty; —and who, though private citizens, had the rods and the power of kings. Following the expulsion of the kings there had been patrician magistrates; later, after the secession of the plebs, plebeian magistrates had been elected. Of what party, he asked, were they? Of the popular party? Pray what had they done through the agency of the people? Of the aristocratic party? When they had held no meeting of the senate for close upon a year, and were now so conducting it as to suppress discussion of the national welfare? Let them not trust too much to other men's fears; the things men were enduring now seemed more grievous to them than the things they feared. While Horatius was thus declaiming, the decemvirs were at a loss to know how far they could afford either to resent or to overlook it; nor could they make out what the upshot was likely to be. But Gaius Claudius, the uncle of Appius the decemvir, made a speech, approaching more nearly to entreaty than expostulation, in which he implored him in the name of his own brother's and his father's departed spirits to remember rather the civil society in which he had been born than the wicked compact he had entered into with his colleagues. This he begged much more for Appius's own sake than for the sake of the nation; indeed the nation would demand its rights in spite of the decemvirs, if they did not accord them voluntarily; but a great struggle usually aroused great passions, and he shuddered to think what these might lead to. Although the decemvirs wished to prevent discussion of anything but the subject they had introduced, they were ashamed to interrupt Claudius, who accordingly brought his speech to a conclusion, with the proposal that the senate should take no action. Everybody accepted this as meaning that Claudius held the decemvirs to be private citizens; and many of consular rank signified their approval, without discussion. Another motion, ostensibly harsher, but in reality somewhat less drastic, directed the patricians to assemble and proclaim an interrex. For by passing any measure whatsoever they declared those who presided over the senate to be magistrates; whereas they had been rated as mere citizens by him who advised the senate against adopting any resolution. Thus the cause of the decemvirs was already collapsing, when Lucius Cornelius Maluginensis, brother of Marcus Cornelius the decemvir, who had purposely been reserved to be the last speaker among the ex-consuls, defended his brother and his brother's colleagues by feigning anxiety about the war. He said he wondered by what fatality it had come about that the decemvirs were being attacked solely, or at least chiefly, by those who had sought election to that office; or why it was that during the many months in which the state had been at peace nobody had raised the question whether regular magistrates were at the head of affairs, and only now, when the enemy were almost at their gates, were men sowing political dissension; unless it was because they thought that in troubled waters it would be harder to discern what was going on. For the rest, was it not right that when men's attention was taken up with the larger concern, all prejudgment of so important a matter should be eliminated? He therefore proposed, concerning the charge brought by Valerius and Horatius that the official term of the decemvirs had expired on the day before the Ides of May, that they should first conclude the impending wars and restore the state's tranquillity, and then refer the question to the senate for settlement; and that Appius Claudius should at once make up his mind to recognize that he must explain, regarding the comitia which he had held for the election of decemvirs —being one himself —whether they were chosen for one year or until the missing laws should be enacted. For the present he thought they should pay no attention to anything but the war. If the current rumours about it seemed to them to be false, and if they supposed that not only the couriers but the Tusculan envoys also had brought them idle stories, he suggested that they send out scouts to investigate and return with more certain information. But if they trusted both couriers and envoys, a levy should be held at the earliest possible moment; and the decemvirs should lead the armies whither it seemed good to each of them, giving precedence to no other business. The younger senators were about to force this motion through on a division, when Valerius and Horatius, in a second and more impassioned outburst, demanded that they be permitted to speak about the state of the nation. They would address the people, they said, if they were restrained by a faction from speaking in the senate; for neither could private citizens prevent them, whether in the senate-house or in an assembly, nor would they yield to the emblems of a fictitious authority. Thereupon Appius, thinking the moment was at hand when, unless he opposed their violence with equal boldness, his authority was doomed, cried out, It will be safer not to utter a word except on the subject of debate! And when Valerius asserted that he would not be silenced by a mere citizen, he sent a lictor to arrest him. Valerius was imploring the citizens for help, from the threshold of the Curia, when Lucius Cornelius, throwing his arms about Appius, and feigning to be concerned for the other man, stopped the quarrel. At his request Valerius was permitted to say what he wished. But liberty went no further than speech; the decemvirs made good their design. Even the ex-consuls and the elder senators, in consequence of their lingering hatred of the tribunician power, which they thought the plebs regretted much more keenly than they did the authority of the consuls, almost preferred that at some later time the decemvirs should voluntarily abdicate than that hatred of them should lead to another rising of the plebs. If gentle measures should restore the government to the consuls, without any popular outcry, they might, either through the intervention of wars, or through the moderation of the consuls in the exercise of their power, bring the plebeians to forget the tribunes. The senators permitted in silence the proclamation of a levy. The young men answered to their names, since the authority of the decemvirs was without appeal. When the legions were enrolled, the decemvirs settled among themselves who ought to go to the front and who command the armies. Chief among the ten were Quintus Fabius and Appius Claudius. The war at home seemed more important than that abroad. The violence of Appius was, they thought, more adapted to quell disturbances in the City; while Fabius was of a character deficient in steady rectitude rather than actively bad. For this man, once pre-eminent in civil and in military affairs, had been so altered by the decemvirate and by his colleagues that he chose rather to be like Appius than like himself. To him was intrusted the war in the Sabine country, and Manius Rabuleius and Quintus Poetelius were given him as colleagues. Marcus Cornelius was sent to Mount Algidus, with Lucius Minucius, Titus Antonius, Caeso Duillius, and Marcus Sergius. Spurius Oppius they assigned to Appius Claudius, to help him in looking out for the City; and they gave them the same powers as had been exercised by the entire board. The business of the nation was managed no better in the field than at home. The only fault of the generals was that they had made the citizens detest them; the rest of the blame belonged to the soldiers, who, that nothing might anywhere prosper under the command and auspices of the decemvirs, permitted themselves to be beaten, to their own disgrace and that of their commanders. Their armies were routed, both by the Sabines near Eretum, and on Algidus by the Aequi. From Eretum they fled in the silence of the night, and intrenched themselves near the City, between Fidenae and Crustumeria, on elevated ground. When the enemy followed them up, they nowhere ventured to fight in the open field, but defended themselves by the position and their rampart, not by bravery and arms. The disgrace on Algidus was worse, and a worse disaster was sustained; even the camp was lost, and stripped of all their baggage, the soldiers fled to Tusculum, to subsist by the loyalty and compassion of their hosts, —which nevertheless did not fail them. To Rome came such alarming reports that the patricians, laying aside now their hatred of the decemvirs, voted to establish watches in the City, and commanded all who were of an age to bear arms to guard the walls and do outpost duty before the gates. They decreed that arms should be dispatched to Tusculum, and reinforcements, and that the decemvirs should descend from the Tusculan citadel and hold their troops in camp; that the other camp should be transferred from Fidenae to Sabine territory, so that by taking the offensive they might frighten the enemy into abandoning his design to besiege the City. To the disaster suffered at the hands of the enemy the decemvirs added two shameful crimes, one committed in the field, the other at home. Lucius Siccius was serving in the Sabine campaign. Taking advantage of the hatred entertained for the decemvirs, he would scatter hints, in secret conversations with the common soldiers, that they should elect tribunes and secede. So the generals sent him to look out a place for an encampment; and instructed the men whom they assigned to share his expedition to set upon him when they had got to a suitable spot, and kill him. He died not unavenged. For he laid about him, and several of the assassins fell, for he was very strong, and though surrounded, defended himself with a courage equal to his strength. The others reported at the camp that they had fallen into an ambuscade, and that Siccius had perished, fighting valiantly, and with him certain soldiers. At first their report was believed; afterwards a cohort set out, by permission of the decemvirs, to bury the slain; and finding that none of the bodies there had been despoiled, and that Siccius lay armed in the midst, with all the bodies facing him, while the enemy had left no dead nor any indication of having withdrawn, they brought back the corpse, and declared that Siccius had certainly been murdered by his own men. The camp was ablaze with indignation, and it was resolved that Siccius should be carried to Rome forthwith; but the decemvirs made haste to give him a military funeral at the public cost. The soldiers sorrowed greatly at his burial, and the worst reports were current about the decemvirs. This outrage was followed by another, committed in Rome, which was inspired by lust and was no less shocking in its consequences than that which had led, through the rape and the death of Lucretia, to the expulsion of the Tarquinii from the City and from their throne; thus not only did the same end befall the decemvirs as had befallen the kings, but the same cause deprived them of their power. Appius Claudius was seized with the desire to debauch a certain maiden belonging to the plebs. The girl's father, Lucius Verginius, a centurion of rank, was serving on Algidus, a man of exemplary life at home and in the army. His wife had been brought up in the same principles, and his children were being trained in them. He had betrothed his daughter to the former tribune Lucius Icilius, an active man of proven courage in the cause of the plebeians. She was a grown girl, remarkably beautiful, and Appius, crazed with love, attempted to seduce her with money and promises. But finding that her modesty was proof against everything, he resolved on a course of cruel and tyrannical violence. He commissioned Marcus Claudius, his client, to claim the girl as his slave, and not to yield to those who demanded her liberation, thinking that the absence of the maiden's father afforded an opportunity for the wrong. As Verginia was entering the Forum —for there, in booths, were the elementary schools —the minister of the decemvir's lust laid his hand upon her, and calling her the daughter of his bond-woman and herself a slave, commanded her to follow him, and threatened to drag her off by force if she hung back. Terror made the maiden speechless, but the cries of her nurse imploring help of the Quirites quickly brought a crowd about them. The names of Verginius her father and of her betrothed Icilius were known and popular. Their acquaintance were led to support the girl out of regard for them; the crowd was influenced by the shamelessness of the attempt. She was already safe from violence, when the claimant protested that there was no occasion for the people to become excited; he was proceeding lawfully, not by force. He then summoned the girl to court. She was advised by her supporters to 145 follow him, and they went before the tribunal of Appius. The plaintiff acted out a comedy familiar to the judge, since it was he and no other who had invented the plot: The girl had been born, said Marcus, in his house, and had thence been stealthily conveyed to the home of Verginius and palmed off upon him as his own; he had good evidence for what he said, and would prove it even though Verginius himself were judge, who was more wronged than he was; meanwhile it was right that the hand-maid should follow her master. The friends of the girl said that Verginius was absent on the service of the state; he would be at hand in two days' time if he were given notice of the matter; it was unjust that a man should be involved in litigation about his children when away from home; they therefore requested Appius to leave the case open until the father arrived, and in accordance with the law he had himself proposed, grant the custody of the girl to the defendants, nor suffer a grown maiden's honour to be jeopardized before her freedom should be adjudicated. Appius prefaced his decision by saying that it was evident how much he favoured liberty from that very law which the friends of Verginius made the pretext for their claim; but the law would afford liberty a sure protection only if it varied neither with causes nor with persons; for in the case of others who were claimed as free, the demand was legal, since any one might bring an action: in the case of one who was under the authority of a father there was no one else to whom the master ought to yield the custody; accordingly he decreed that the father should be summoned, and that meanwhile the claimant should not relinquish his right, but should take the girl in charge and guarantee that she should be produced at the coming of him who was called her father. Against the injustice of the decree, though many murmured their disapproval, there was not a single man who dared to stand out; when Publius Numitorius, the girl's great-uncle, and her lover Icilius, arrived on the scene. When a path had been opened for them through the throng, since the crowd believed that the intervention of Icilius would be particularly effectual in resisting Appius, the lictor cried that the case had been decided, and as Icilius began to protest, attempted to thrust him aside. Even a placid nature would have been incensed by so violent an insult. You must use iron to rid yourself of me, Appius, he cried, that you may carry through in silence what you desire should be concealed. This maiden I am going to wed; and I intend that my bride shall be chaste. So call together all your colleagues' lictors too; bid them make ready rods and axes: the promised wife of Icilius shall not pass the night outside her father's house. No! If you have taken from the Roman plebs the assistance of the tribunes and the right of appeal, two citadels for the defence of liberty, it has not therefore been granted to your lust to lord it over our children and our wives as well! Vent your rage upon our backs and our necks: let our chastity at least be safe. If that shall be assailed, I will call on the Quirites here present to protect my bride, Verginius will invoke the help of the soldiers in behalf of his only daughter, and all of us will implore the protection of gods and men; nor shall you ever repeat that decree of yours without shedding our blood. I ask you, Appius, to consider earnestly whither you are going. Let Verginius decide what to do about his daughter, when he comes; but of one thing he may rest assured: if he yields to this man's claim, he will have to seek a husband for her. As for me, in defence of the freedom of my bride I will sooner die than prove disloyal. The crowd was deeply moved and a conflict appeared to be imminent. The lictors had surrounded Icilius, but had nevertheless gone no further than to threaten him, since Appius declared that it was not a question of Verginia's defence by Icilius, but of a turbulent fellow, who even now breathed the spirit of the tribunate, seeking an opportunity to stir up strife. He would furnish him no excuse for it that day; but that he might know now that the concession had not been made to his own wantonness but to the absent Verginius, to the name of father, and to liberty, he would not pronounce judgment that day nor deliver a decision; he would request Marcus Claudius to waive his right and suffer the girl to remain at large until the morrow; but unless the father should appear the next day, he gave notice to Icilius and to those like Icilius that the proposer of his law would not fail to support it, nor the decemvir be wanting in firmness; and in any case he should not call together his colleagues' lictors to repress the instigators of sedition, but rest content with his own. The time for accomplishing the wrong having been postponed, the girl's supporters went apart by themselves, and decided that first of all the brother of Icilius and the son of Numitorius, active young men, should proceed straight to the City gate and make all possible haste to the camp, to summon Verginius; for the maiden's safety turned on her protector's being at hand in time. They set out the moment they got their orders, and galloping their horses, carried the message through to the father. When the claimant of the girl pressed Icilius to furnish the sureties required of her guarantor, and Icilius said that it was precisely that which he was considering (though he was doing his best to consume time, that the messengers who had been dispatched to the camp might get a start on the way), the people began on every side to raise their hands, and every man of them to indicate his readiness to go bail for Icilius. And Icilius said, with tears in his eyes, I am grateful to you; to-morrow I will use your services; of sureties I now have enough. So Verginia was surrendered, on the security of her kinsmen. Appius waited a little while, that he might not appear to have sat for this case only, and when nobody applied to him —for all other matters were forgotten in men's concern over this, —he went to his house and wrote to his colleagues in camp that they should grant no furlough to Verginius, and should even detain him in custody. His base design was too late, as it deserved to be; Verginius had already got his leave, and had set out in the fore-part of the night, nor was it until early the next morning that the letters for detaining him were delivered, to no purpose. But in the City, as the citizens at break of day were standing in the Forum, agog with expectation, Verginius, dressed in sordid clothes and leading his daughter, who was also meanly clad and was attended by a number of matrons, came down into the market-place with a vast throng of supporters. He then began to go about and canvass people, and not merely to ask their aid as a favour, but to claim it as his due, saying that he stood daily in the battle-line in defence of their children and their wives; that there was no man of whom more strenuous and courageous deeds in war could be related —to what end, if despite the safety of the City those outrages which were dreaded as the worst that could follow a city's capture must be suffered by their children? Pleading thus, as if in a kind of public appeal, he went about amongst the people. Similar appeals were thrown out by Icilius; but the women who attended them were more moving, as they wept in silence, than any words. In the face of all these things Appius hardened his heart —so violent was the madness, as it may more truly be called than love, that had overthrown his reason —and mounted the tribunal. The plaintiff was actually uttering a few words of complaint, on the score of having been balked of his rights the day before through partiality, when, before he could finish his demand, or Verginius be given an opportunity to answer, Appius interrupted him. The discourse with which he led up to his decree may perhaps be truthfully represented in some one of the old accounts, but since I can nowhere discover one that is plausible, in view of the enormity of the decision, it seems my duty to set forth the naked fact, upon which all agree, that he adjudged Verginia to him who claimed her as his slave. At first everybody was rooted to the spot in amazement at so outrageous a proceeding, and for a little while after the silence was unbroken. Then, when Marcus Claudius was making his way through the group of matrons to lay hold upon the girl, and had been greeted by the women with wails and lamentations, Verginius shook his fist at Appius and cried, It was to Icilius, Appius, not to you that I betrothed my daughter; and it was for wedlock, not dishonour, that I brought her up. Would you have men imitate the beasts of the field and the forest in promiscuous gratification of their lust? Whether these people propose to tolerate such conduct I do not know: I cannot believe that those who have arms will endure it. The claimant of the maiden was being forced back by the ring of women and supporters who surrounded her, when silence was commanded by a herald; and the decemvir, crazed with lust, declared that he knew, not only from the abusive words uttered by Icilius the day before and the violence of Verginius, which he could prove by the testimony of the Roman People, but also from definite information, that all through the night meetings had been held in the City to promote sedition. Accordingly, having been aware of the approaching struggle, he had come down into the Forum with armed men, not that he might do violence to any peaceable citizen, but to coerce, conformably to the dignity of his office, those who would disturb the nation's peace. You will therefore, he cried, best be quiet! Go, lictor, remove the mob and open a way for the master to seize his slave! When he had wrathfully thundered out these words, the crowd parted spontaneously and left the girl standing there, a prey to villainy. Then Verginius, seeing no help anywhere, said, I ask you, Appius, first to pardon a father's grief if I have somewhat harshly inveighed against you; and then to suffer me to question the nurse here, in the maiden's presence, what all this means, that if I have been falsely called a father, I may go away with a less troubled spirit. Permission being granted, he led his daughter and the nurse apart, to the booths near the shrine of Cloacina, now known as the New Booths, and there, snatching a knife from a butcher, he exclaimed, Thus, my daughter, in the only way I can, do I assert your freedom! He then stabbed her to the heart, and, looking back to the tribunal, cried, 'Tis you, Appius, and your life I devote to destruction with this blood! The shout which broke forth at the dreadful deed roused Appius, and he ordered Verginius to be seized. But Verginius made a passage for himself with his knife wherever he came, and was also protected by a crowd of men who attached themselves to him, and so reached the City gate. Icilius and Numitorius lifted up the lifeless body and showed it to the people, bewailing the crime of Appius, the girl's unhappy beauty, and the necessity that had constrained her father. After them came the matrons crying aloud, Was it on these terms that children were brought into the world? Were these the rewards of chastity? —with such other complaints as are prompted at a time like this by a woman's anguish, and are so much the more pitiful as their lack of self-control makes them the more give way to grief. The men, and especially Icilius, spoke only of the tribunician power; of the right of appeal to the people which had been taken from them; and of their resentment at the nation's wrongs. The wildest excitement prevailed amongst the people, occasioned in part by the atrocity of the crime, in part by the hope of improving the opportunity to regain their liberty. Appius first commanded that Icilius be summoned; then, on his resisting, that he be arrested; and at last, when the crowd would not allow his attendants to approach the man, he headed a band of patrician youths in person, and advancing through the mob, bade them drag his enemy off to prison. By this time Icilius was supported not only by the populace but by the leaders of the populace as well, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, who, forcing the lictor back, declared that if Appius proceeded legally, they would protect Icilius from the prosecution of a mere citizen; if he sought to make use of violence, there too they would be a match for him. This led to a desperate struggle. The decemvir's lictor now made a rush at Valerius and Horatius; his rods were broken by the mob. Appius mounted the platform; Horatius and Valerius followed him. To them the crowd listened; the decemvir's voice they drowned with noise. And now, as though vested with authority, Valerius was commanding the lictors to withdraw from one who was a private citizen; when Appius, broken in spirit and fearing for his life, covered up his head and sought refuge in a house near the Forum, unobserved by his opponents. Spurius Oppius, wishing to assist his colleague, burst into the Forum from the other quarter. He saw that authority had been overcome by force. Distracted then by the suggestions which came from every side, and timidly agreeing first with one and then with another of his many advisers, he ended by ordering the senate to be summoned. This course, inasmuch as a great proportion of the patricians appeared to disapprove of the decemvirs' acts, afforded hopes that the senators would end their power, and so quieted the multitude. The senate decided that the plebs must not be provoked, and that it was even more necessary to see to it that the arrival of Verginius in the army should not occasion any turbulence. Accordingly certain of the younger senators were dispatched to the camp, which was then on Mount Vecilius, and carried word to the decemvirs that they must employ all their resources to keep the troops from mutiny. There Verginius aroused a greater commotion than he had left in Rome. For besides that he was seen approaching attended by a body of nearly four hundred men, who had joined him when he left the City, in their anger and resentment at the affair, the weapon in his hand and the gore with which he was spattered drew the attention of the entire camp upon him. Then too the appearance of togas in the camp, in many places, produced the effect of a greater company of civilians than were actually there. Being asked what the matter was, Verginius wept, and for a long time answered never a word; at length, when the bustle and confusion of the gathering had subsided and silence had ensued, he gave an orderly account of all that had taken place. Then, lifting up his hands in an attitude of prayer, and addressing the crowd as his fellow-soldiers, he besought them not to attribute to him the crime of which Appius Claudius stood guilty, nor to repudiate him as one who had murdered his child. To him the life of his daughter had been dearer than his own, if she had been permitted to live pure and chaste; when he saw her being carried off like a slave to be dishonoured, thinking it better to lose his children by death than by outrage, he had been impelled by pity to an act of seeming cruelty; nor would he have survived his daughter, had he not hoped to avenge her death by the help of his fellow-soldiers. They too had daughters, sisters, and wives; the lust of Appius Claudius had not been extinguished with the life of Verginia, but its lawlessness would be proportioned to its impunity. In the calamity of another they had been given a warning to be on their guard against similar wrongs. So far as he was concerned, his wife had been taken from him in the course of nature, his daughter, because she could no longer have lived chaste, had died a pitiful but an honourable death; for the lust of Appius there was now no longer in his house any scope; from other forms which his violence might take he would defend his own person with no less spirit than he had shown in defence of his daughter; the others must look out for themselves and for their own children. As Verginius spoke these words in a loud voice, the multitude signified with responsive shouts that they would not forget his sufferings nor fail to vindicate their liberty. And the civilians, mingling with the crowd, repeated the same complaints and told them how much more shameful the thing would have appeared if they could have seen it instead of hearing about it; at the same time they reported that the decemvirate was already overthrown at Rome; and on the arrival of later tidings, to the effect that Appius had almost lost his life and had gone into exile, they induced the troops to raise the cry To arms! and to pluck up their standards and set out for Rome. The decemvirs, troubled alike by what they saw and by what they heard had taken place in Rome, rushed through the camp, one this way, another that, to still the rising. And so long as they mildly remonstrated, they got no answer; but if one of them tried to use his authority, they told him that they were men, and armed. They marched in column to the City and took possession of the Aventine, urging the plebeians, as often as they fell in with one, to make an effort to regain their liberty and to elect plebeian tribunes. Save this, no violent proposals were heard. The senate was convened by Spurius Oppius. It was resolved that no harsh action should be taken, seeing that occasion for the mutiny had been given by themselves. Three delegates of consular rank, Spurius Tarpeius, Gaius Julius, and Publius Sulpicius, were dispatched in the name of the senate to inquire by whose orders the men had deserted the camp, and what they meant, who with arms had seized the Aventine, and, abandoning the enemy, had captured their native City. The men were at no loss for an answer: what they lacked was some one to make it, since they had as yet no definite leader, nor did individuals quite dare to single themselves out for enmity. But the crowd called out in unison that they should send them Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, to whom they would intrust their reply. After the delegates had been dismissed, Verginius reminded the soldiers that they had been thrown into confusion a few minutes before, over a matter of no very great importance, because the multitude had been without a head; and although a very good answer had been returned, yet this had been due rather to their happening to feel alike about the matter than to a concerted plan. He recommended that ten men should be chosen to have supreme command, and that they should be styled, by a military title, tribunes of the soldiers. When they would have tendered Verginius himself the first appointment to this office, he replied, Reserve your good opinion of me till my own affairs and yours are in a better plight; to me no honour can be agreeable while my daughter is unavenged; nor is it well for you, with the state in such confusion, to be led by those who are most exposed to hatred. If I can render any service, it shall not be less because I am a private citizen. So they chose ten military tribunes. Nor was the army in the Sabine country inactive. There too, at the instigation of Icilius and Numitorius, a secession from the decemvirate was brought about; men's anger on being reminded of the murder of Siccius being no less violent than that which was kindled in them by the new story of the maiden whose dishonour had been so foully sought. Icilius, on hearing that military tribunes had been elected on the Aventine, feared lest the City comitia might take their cue from the comitia of the soldiers and elect the same men to be tribunes of the plebs, for he was experienced in the ways of the people; and having designs upon that office himself, he saw to it, before they marched to the City, that the same number of men, vested with equal power, were chosen by his own army. They entered Rome under their standards, by the Colline Gate, and marched right through the midst of the City to the Aventine. There they joined the other army, and directed the twenty military tribunes to appoint two of their number to exercise supreme command. Marcus Oppius and Sextus Manilius were appointed. The Fathers were alarmed about the state; but, though the senate held daily sessions, they spent more time in recriminations than in deliberating. Siccius's murder was cast in the teeth of the decemvirs, as well as the lust of Appius, and their disgraces in the field. It was decided that Valerius and Horatius should go to the Aventine. They agreed to go only on condition that the decemvirs would put off the insignia of that magistracy which they had already ceased to hold the year before. The decemvirs, complaining that they were being deprived of their office, asserted that they would not lay down their authority until after the enactment of the laws which had been the reason of their appointment. Having learned from Marcus Duillius, who had been a plebeian tribune, that nothing was coming of the endless bickerings of the senate, the commons quitted the Aventine for the Sacred Mount, since Duillius assured them that not until the patricians beheld the City deserted would they feel any real concern; the Sacred Mount would remind them of the firmness of the plebs, and they would know whether it were possible or not that affairs should be reduced to harmony without the restoration of the tribunician power. Marching out by the Via Nomentana, then called Ficulensis, they pitched their camp on the Sacred Mount, having imitated the good behaviour of their fathers and made no depredations. Following the army came the plebeian civilians; nor did any one who was of an age to go hold back. They were attended a little way forth by their wives and children, who inquired pathetically to whose protection they were leaving them, in that City where neither chastity nor liberty was sacred. Now that all Rome was desolate with an unwonted loneliness, and there was nobody in the Forum but a few old men, and it appeared, particularly when the Fathers had been summoned to the senate-house, quite deserted, there were many others besides Horatius and Valerius who remonstrated. What will you wait for, Conscript Fathers? they cried out. If the decemvirs persist in their obstinacy, will you suffer everything to go to wrack and ruin? Pray what is that authority, decemvirs, to which you cling with such tenacity? Is it to roofs and walls you will render judgment? Are you not ashamed that your lictors should be seen in the Forum in almost larger numbers than the other citizens? What do you mean to do if the enemy should come to the City? What if, by and bye, the plebs, finding us unmoved by their secession, come with sword in hand? Do you wish the downfall of the City to be the end of your rule? And yet, either we must have no plebs, or we must have plebeian tribunes. We will sooner dispense with patrician magistrates than they with plebeian. It was a new and untried power when they extorted it from our fathers: now that they have once been captivated by its charm, they would be even less willing to forgo it, especially when we on our side do not so temper the exercise of our authority that they stand in no need of help. As these reproaches were flung at them from every quarter, the decemvirs were overborne by the consensus of opinion and gave assurances that they would submit, since it was thought best, to the authority of the senate. They had but this one request to make —which was also a warning, —that their persons might be protected from men's hate, and that their blood might not be the means of accustoming the plebs to punish senators. Valerius and Horatius were then sent to bring back the plebs and adjust all differences, on such terms as might seem good to them; and they were also instructed to secure the decemvirs against the anger and violence of the people. Having proceeded to the camp, they were received with great rejoicings by the plebs, as undoubted champions of liberty both in the beginning of the disturbance and in the sequel. In recognition of this they were thanked on their arrival, Icilius speaking on behalf of the multitude. And it was Icilius too who, when terms were discussed and the commissioners inquired what the plebeians demanded, made such requests, in pursuance of an understanding already reached before the arrival of the envoys, that it was apparent they based their hope more on equity than on arms. For the recovery of the tribunician power and the appeal were the things they sought —things which had been the help of the plebs before the election of decemvirs; —and that it should not be held against any man that he had incited the soldiers or the people to recover their liberties by secession. Only in regard to the punishment of the decemvirs was their demand a harsh one; for they thought it just that the decemvirs should be delivered up to them, and threatened to burn them alive. To these proposals the commissioners replied: The demands which have been prompted by your judgment are so right that they ought to have been accorded you voluntarily; for you seek in them guarantees of liberty, not of a licence to make attacks on others. But your anger calls for pardon rather than indulgence, seeing that hatred of cruelty is driving you headlong into cruelty, and almost before you are free yourselves you are wishing to lord it over your adversaries. Will the time never come when our state shall rest from punishments visited either by the patricians on the Roman plebs or by the plebs on the patricians? A shield is what you need more than a sword. It is enough and more than enough for a lowly citizen when he lives in the enjoyment of equal rights in the state, neither inflicting an injury nor receiving one. Even if you are one day to make yourselves dreaded, when you have got back your magistrates and laws and possess authority to put us on trial for our lives and fortunes, you shall then give judgment in accord with the merits of each particular case: for the present it is enough to regain your liberty. When the people all consented that they should do as they saw fit, the envoys assured them that they would settle matters and presently return. So they departed and explained to the Fathers the demands of the plebs. The other decemvirs, when they found that, contrary to their expectation, no mention was made of any punishment of themselves, made no objection to anything: Appius, hard-hearted, knowing himself peculiarly unpopular, and measuring other men's hatred of himself by his own of them, exclaimed, I am not unaware of the lot which threatens me. I perceive that the attack upon us is only being postponed till arms are handed over to our adversaries. Hatred must have its offering of blood. I too am willing to relinquish the decemvirate. A decree was passed by the senate that the decemvirs should abdicate the magistracy at the earliest possible moment; that Quintus Furius, the Pontifex Maximus, should hold an election of plebeian tribunes; and that no one should be made to suffer for the secession of the soldiers and the plebs. Having so decreed the senate adjourned and the decemvirs went before the people and laid down their office, to the great delight of all. These events were reported to the plebs, the envoys being accompanied by all the people left in the City. The multitude was met by another joyful throng from the camp, and they exchanged congratulations on the restoration of freedom and harmony to the state. The commissioners addressed the people as follows: Prosperity, favour, and good fortune to you and the Republic! Return to your native City, to your homes, to your wives, and your children; but let the self-restraint you have shown here, where no man's farm has been violated, though so many things were useful and necessary to so great a multitude, be preserved when you return to the City. Go to the Aventine, whence you set out. There in the auspicious place where you first laid the foundations of your liberty, you shall choose tribunes of the plebs. The Pontifex Maximus will be at hand to hold the election. With loud applause and great alacrity the people showed their approval of all that had been said. They pulled up their standards from the place and set out for Rome, vying with those whom they met in joyful demonstrations. Armed, they proceeded in silence through the City to the Aventine. There the Pontifex Maximus at once held the comitia, and they elected tribunes of the plebs; first of all Lucius Verginius; then Lucius Icilius and Publius Numitorius, Verginia's great-uncle, the instigators of the secession; then Gaius Sicinius, son of the man who is related to have been the first plebeian tribune chosen on the Sacred Mount; and Marcus Duillius, who had filled the tribuneship with distinction before the decemvirs were appointed, and had not failed the plebs in their contentions with the decemvirs. Then, more by reason of their promise than for any deserts of theirs, they elected Marcus Titinius, Marcus Pomponius, Gaius Apronius, Appius Villius, and Gaius Oppius. As soon as they had taken office, Lucius Icilius proposed to the people, and they so voted, that no man should suffer for the secession from the decemvirs. Immediately a bill that consuls should be elected subject to appeal was offered by Marcus Duillius and was carried. These matters were all transacted by the council of the plebs, in the Flaminian Meadows, which men now call the Flaminian Circus. Then, through an interrex, they elected to the consulship Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, who at once assumed office. Their administration was favourable to the people, without in any way wronging the patricians, though not without offending them; for whatever was done to protect the liberty of the plebs they regarded as a diminution of their own strength. To begin with, since it was virtually an undecided question whether the patricians were legally bound by plebiscites, they carried a statute in the centuriate comitia enacting that what the plebs should order in the tribal organization should be binding on the people —a law which provided the rogations of the tribunes with a very sharp weapon. Next they not only restored a consular law about the appeal, the unique defence of liberty, which had been overthrown by the decemviral power, but they also safeguarded it for the future by the solemn enactment of a new law, that no one should declare the election of any magistrate without appeal, and that he who should so declare might be put to death without offence to law or religion, and that such a homicide should not be held a capital crime. And having sufficiently strengthened the plebs, by means of the appeal on the one hand and the help of the tribunes on the other, they revived, in the interest of the tribunes themselves, the principle of their sacrosanctity (which was a thing that had now come to be well-nigh forgotten) by restoring certain long-neglected ceremonies; and they rendered those magistrates inviolate, not merely on the score of religion but also by a statute, solemnly enacting that he who should hurt the tribunes of the plebs, the aediles, or the decemviral judges should forfeit his head to Jupiter, and that his possessions should be sold at the temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera. Expounders of the law deny that any one is sacrosanct by virtue of this statute, but maintain that the man who has injured any of these officials is solemnly forfeited to Jupiter; hence the aedile may be arrested and imprisoned by the greater magistrates, an act which, though it be unlawful —for he is thereby injured who, according to this statute, may not be injured, —is nevertheless a proof that the aedile is not regarded as sacrosanct; whereas the tribunes are sacrosanct in consequence of the ancient oath taken by the plebs, when they first created this magistracy. There were some who taught that by this same Horatian law the consuls also were protected, and the praetors, inasmuch as they were created under the same auspices as the consuls; for the consul was called judge. But this interpretation is refuted by the fact that it was not yet the custom in those days for the consul to be called judge, but praetor. Such were the consular laws. The practice was also instituted by the same consuls that the decrees of the senate should be delivered to the aediles of the plebs at the temple of Ceres. Up to that time they were wont to be suppressed or falsified, at the pleasure of the consuls. Marcus Duillius, the tribune of the plebs, then proposed to the plebs, and they so decreed, that whosoever should leave the plebs without tribunes and whosoever should declare the election of a magistrate without appeal should be scourged and beheaded. All these measures, though they were passed against the will of the patricians, were yet not opposed by them, since, so far, no one person had been singled out for attack. Then, when the tribunician power and the liberty of the plebs were firmly established, the tribunes, believing that it was now safe to proceed against individuals and that the time was ripe for doing so, selected Verginius to bring the first accusation and Appius to be defendant. When Verginius had cited Appius to appear, and the latter, attended by a crowd of young patricians, had come down into the Forum, there was instantly revived in the minds of all the recollection of that most wicked power, as soon as they caught sight of the man himself and his satellites. Then Verginius said, Oratory was invented for doubtful matters; and so I shall neither waste time in arraigning before you the man from whose cruelty you freed yourselves with arms, nor shall I suffer him to add to his other crimes the impudence of defending himself. I therefore pardon you, Appius Claudius, all the impious and wicked deeds which you dared, during two years, to heap one upon another; on one charge only, unless you shall name a referee to establish your innocence of having illegally assigned custody of a free person to him who claimed her as his slave, I shall order you to be taken to prison. Neither in the protection of the tribunes nor in the decision of the people had Appius anything to hope; yet he called upon the tribunes, and when none of them would stay proceedings, and he had been arrested by an officer, he cried, I appeal. The sound of this word, the one safeguard of liberty, coming from that mouth by which, shortly before, a free person had been given into the custody of one who claimed her as a slave, produced a hush. And while the people muttered, each man to himself, that there were gods after all, who did not neglect the affairs of men; and that pride and cruelty were receiving their punishment, which though late was nevertheless not light —that he was appealing who had nullified appeal; that he was imploring the protection of the people who had trodden all the rights of the people under foot; that he was being carried off to prison, deprived of his right to liberty, who had condemned the person of a free citizen to slavery —the voice of Appius himself was heard amidst the murmurs of the assembly, beseeching the Roman People to protect him. He reminded them of the services his forefathers had rendered the state in peace and in war; of his own unfortunate affection for the Roman plebs, in consequence of which he had given up his consulship —in order to make the laws equal for all —with great offence to the patricians; —of the laws he had himself drawn up, which were still standing while their author was being dragged off to prison. For the rest, when he should be given an opportunity to plead his cause, he would try what would come of his own peculiar services and shortcomings; at present he asked that, in accordance with the common right of citizenship, he be permitted, being a Roman citizen and under accusation, to speak, and to be judged by the Roman People. He did not so fear men's malice as to have no hope in the justice and pity of his fellow citizens. But if he was to be imprisoned, his cause unheard, he appealed once more to the tribunes of the plebs, and warned them not to imitate those whom they hated. And if the tribunes should confess that they were bound by the same agreement which they charged the decemvirs with having entered into, not to hear an appeal, he still appealed to the people, and invoked the laws, both consular and tribunician, which had been enacted concerning appeals that very year. For who, he asked, should make an appeal, if a man who had not been condemned, whose cause had not been heard, might not do so? What humble plebeian would find protection in the laws, if they afforded none to Appius Claudius? His own case would show whether the new statutes had established tyranny or freedom, and whether the appeal to the tribunes and that to the people against the injustice of magistrates had been merely a parade of meaningless forms, or had been really granted. Against this plea Verginius asserted that Appius Claudius alone was beyond the pale of the laws and of the rights of citizens and men. He bade his hearers look on the tribunal, the stronghold of all crimes, where that man, as perpetual decemvir, deadly foe to their fortunes, their persons, and their lives, threatening them all with rods and axes, despising gods and men, backed by executioners instead of lictors, had began to turn his thoughts from rapine and murder to lust; and, in full sight of the Roman People, had torn a free maiden from her father's arms, as though she had been a captive taken in war, and bestowed her as a gift upon his pimp and client; —the tribunal where, by his tyrannical decree and wicked judgments, he had armed a father's right hand against his daughter; where, as they were lifting up the body of the dying girl, he had ordered her betrothed and her uncle to be haled to prison —more moved by the disappointing of his pleasure than by her death. For Appius too had been built that prison which he was wont to call the home of the Roman plebs. Accordingly, though he should again and repeatedly appeal, he would himself again and repeatedly challenge him to prove before a referee that he had not adjudged a free citizen to the custody of one who claimed her as a slave. Should he refuse to go before a referee, he bade him be led to gaol, as one found guilty. Though none raised his voice in disapproval, there were yet profound misgivings on the part of the plebs when he was cast into prison, since they saw in the punishment of so great a man a sign that their own liberty was already grown excessive. The tribune appointed a day for the continuance of the trial. Meanwhile from the Latins and the Hernici came envoys to congratulate the Romans upon the harmony subsisting between the patricians and the plebs; and to commemorate it they brought a gift for Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to the Capitol. This was a golden crown, of no great weight, for their states were not rich, and they observed the worship of the gods with piety rather than magnificence. From these same envoy came the information that the Aequi and the Volsci were making strenuous preparations for war. The consuls were therefore bidden to divide the commands between them. To Horatius fell the campaign against the Sabines; to Valerius that against the Aequi. When they had proclaimed a levy for these wars, the plebs showed so much good-will that not only the juniors but also a great number of volunteers who had served their time presented themselves for enrolment, with the result that not alone in numbers but in the quality of the troops as well, owing to the admixture of veterans, the army was stronger than usual. Before they left the City, the consuls had the decemviral laws, which are known as the Twelve Tables, engraved on bronze, and set them up in a public place. Some authors say that the aediles, acting under orders from the tribunes, performed this service. Gaius Claudius, who loathed the wickedness of the decemvirs and was particularly offended by his nephew's insolence, had retired to Regillus, the ancient seat of his family. He was advanced in years, but he returned to Rome to beg for the pardon of the man whose vices he had fled. In sordid garments, accompanied by his clansmen and clients, he went about the Forum, soliciting the support of one citizen after another, beseeching them that they would not seek to brand the Claudian race with the shame of being held to merit imprisonment and chains. A man whose portrait-mask would be held in the highest honour by coming generations, the framer of statutes and the founder of Roman law, lay in prison among night-prowling thieves and banditti. Let them turn their minds from wrath, for a moment, to consider and reflect upon the matter; and let them sooner forgive one man, at the entreaty of so many Claudii, than scorn, in their hatred of one, the prayers of many. He was doing this, he said, out of regard to his family and his name; nor had there been any reconciliation between him and the man whose adversity he sought to succour. By courage they had got back their liberty; by showing mercy they had it in their power to establish harmony between the orders. There were some whom he moved, more by his family-loyalty than by the cause of the man for whom he pleaded. But Verginius begged them rather to pity himself and his daughter, and to hearken, not to the entreaties of the Claudian family, whose province it was to tyrannize over the plebs, but instead to those of Verginia's relations, the three plebeian tribunes, who had been appointed to help the plebs but were themselves imploring the plebs to protect and comfort them. Men found more reason in his tears. And so Appius, cut off from hope, did not wait for the appointed day to come, but killed himself. Immediately thereafter Publius Numitorius caused the arrest of Spurius Oppius, who stood next in point of unpopularity, because he had been in the City when the unjust verdict was pronounced by his colleague. Yet a wrong which Oppius committed was more responsible for men's bitterness towards him than the one which he failed to prevent. A witness was produced who, after enumerating his twenty-seven campaigns, during which he had eight times received special decorations, which he wore in full sight of the people, tore open his tunic and exhibited his back, scored by the rods, professing that if the defendant could name any crime of which he had been guilty, he would suffer him without complaining, private citizen though he was, to vent his rage upon him a second time. Oppius too was led to prison, and before the day of trial he there put an end to his life. The property of Claudius and that of Oppius was confiscated by the tribunes. Their colleagues in the decemvirate went into exile, and their possessions were forfeited. Marcus Claudius also, the claimant of Verginia, was cited and condemned, but at the instance of Verginius himself the extreme penalty was remitted; and being allowed to depart, he went into exile at Tibur. And so the manes of Verginia, who was more fortunate after her death than she had been while alive, after ranging through so many houses in quest of vengeance, were finally at peace; for no guilty man remained. A great fear had come over the patricians, and the bearing of the tribunes was now just what that of the decemvirs had been, when Marcus Duillius, a tribune of the plebs, placed a salutary check upon their excessive power. Our own liberty, he declared, and the exaction of penalties from our enemies have gone far enough; I shall therefore this year allow no one to be arraigned or thrown into gaol. For on the one hand it is not good to rake up old offences, already blotted out of memory, now that recent crimes have been expiated by the punishment of the decemvirs; and on the other hand we have a guarantee that no wrong will be attempted that could call for the intervention of tribunician authority, in view of the unceasing care both consuls take to protect your liberty. It was this moderation on the tribune's part which first relieved the patricians of their fear. It also increased their dislike of the consuls, since the latter had been so wholly devoted to the plebs that the safety and independence of the patricians had been dearer to a plebeian magistracy than to their own, and their opponents had grown sated with punishing them before the consuls evinced any intention of opposing their licence. And there were many who said that the senate had shown a want of resolution in having voted for the measures proposed by the consuls; and indeed there was no doubt that in the troubled state of public affairs they had yielded to the times. The consuls, having set affairs in order in the City and established the position of the plebs, departed to their respective commands. Valerius, facing the armies of the Aequi and Volsci, which had already effected a junction on Mount Algidus, deliberately postponed engaging them; had he risked an immediate decision, it is likely —such was the difference in spirit between the Romans and the enemy, in consequence of the godless dealings of the decemvirs —that the struggle would have cost him a severe defeat. He established his camp a mile from the enemy and kept his men within the works. The enemy repeatedly drew up their troops in fighting order on the ground between the camps, and challenged the Romans to come out and engage them; but no one answered them. At length, weary with standing and waiting, to no purpose, for the battle, the Aequi and Volsci concluded that the Romans had virtually yielded them the victory; and marched off to pillage, some against the Hernici, others against the Latins, leaving behind what was rather a garrison for the camp than a sufficient force for giving battle. On perceiving this the consul repaid the fear he had previously been made to feel, and forming a line of battle, himself provoked the enemy. Since they declined the combat, conscious of their want of strength, the Romans felt an immediate access of courage, and regarded their opponents, cowering behind the palisade, as beaten men. After standing in line all day intent on fighting, the Romans withdrew at nightfall. And they, on their side, were full of hope, as they ate their evening meal; but the enemy's spirits were by no means so high, and they sent out couriers far and wide, in great alarm, to recall the marauders. The nearest of these hastened back; but those who were farther afield could not be found. As soon as it was light, the Romans sallied from their camp, intending to assault the rampart, unless the enemy gave battle. So, when the day was now far spent and the enemy made no move, the consul ordered an advance. The Roman line having got in motion, the Aequi and Volsci were ashamed that their victorious armies should depend for protection upon stockades, instead of valour and the sword. Accordingly they too demanded of their leaders, and received, the signal to attack. A part had already passed out through the gates and the rest were following in good order, each man coming out into his proper place; when the Roman consul, not waiting till the enemy's line should be strongly posted in full force, advanced to the charge. The attack, which he delivered before their troops had all been brought out, and when those who had been were insufficiently deployed, found little more than a surging mob of men, who as they hurried this way and that cast anxious looks at one another and wished for their missing friends. The shouting and the fury of the onset increased their agitation, and at first they fell back; then, when they had collected their wits and on every side heard their officers wrathfully demanding if they meant to yield to troops whom they had beaten, they rallied and held their own. The consul, on the other side, bade the Romans remember that on that day they were for the first time fighting as free men for a free Rome. They would be conquering for themselves, not that they might become the spoil of decemvirs in the hour of victory. It was no Appius who was commanding them, but the consul Valerius, descendant of liberators of the Roman People, and himself their liberator. Let them show that in previous battles it had been the fault of the generals, not of the soldiers, that they had failed to win. It would be disgraceful to have shown more courage in facing their fellow citizens than in facing the enemy, and to have been more fearful of enslavement at home than abroad. No one's chastity but Verginia's had been in danger while they were at peace, no citizen but Appius had been possessed of a dangerous lust; but if the fortune of war turned against them, the children of all of them would be in danger from all those thousands of enemies; yet he would not utter an omen which neither Jupiter nor Mars their Father would suffer to come home to a City founded with such auspices. He reminded them of the Aventine and the Sacred Mount, that they might bring back an undiminished power to the spot where liberty had a few months before been won, and might show that the nature of Rome's soldiers was the same after the expulsion of the decemvirs that it had been before they were elected, and that equality before the law had not lessened the courage of the Roman People. Having pronounced these words amid the standards of the infantry, he hastened to the cavalry. Come, young men, he cried, surpass the foot-soldiers in daring as you do in honour and in rank! At the first encounter the infantry have forced the enemy back; now that they are repulsed, do you give rein to your horses and drive them from the field. They will not sustain the shock; even now they are rather hesitating than resisting. Clapping spurs to their horses they charged the enemy, already disordered by the infantry-attack, and penetrating his lines, dashed through to the rear; while another division made a detour over unoccupied ground, and finding the enemy everywhere in flight turned most of them back from their camp and frightened them off by riding across their course. The infantry and the consul himself swept on into the camp in the full tide of battle, and took possession of it. The enemy's losses in men were great, but in booty were even greater. The report of this battle having been brought not only to Rome but also to the Sabine country and the other army, was celebrated in the City with rejoicings, and in the camp inspired the soldiers with a desire to emulate the glorious achievement. Horatius had already accustomed them, by practice in raids and skirmishes, to be self-reliant, instead of dwelling on the disgrace they had incurred under the leadership of the decemvirs; and small engagements had encouraged the highest hopes of the general outcome. Nor were the Sabines backward —emboldened as they were by their victory of the year before —with challenges and threats. Why, they asked, did the Romans waste their time advancing swiftly in small companies, like brigands, and as hurriedly retreating; thus dissipating in many little combats the issues of one pitched battle? Why did they not attack in line and suffer fortune to decide the matter once for all? Besides the fact that they had of themselves accumulated a good store of confidence, the Romans were also kindled with indignation. The other army, they said, would presently be returning victorious to the City; they themselves were actually being insulted and reviled by the enemy; but when should they be a match for him, if they were not at that moment? When the consul became aware how the soldiers were murmuring in the camp, he called them together. Soldiers, said he, you have heard, I suppose, how matters have gone on Algidus. The army has proved to be such as it was fitting that the army of a free people should be. By my colleague's strategy and the bravery of his men a victory has been won. As for me, my strategy and my courage will be what you make them yourselves. It is within our power either to prolong the war with advantage or to bring it to a speedy and successful end. If it is to be prolonged, I shall seek to increase your hopes and courage from day to day by the same course of training I have begun; if your spirits are already high enough and you wish the war to be decided, come, give a shout here in the camp, to show your good-will and your courage, like the cheer you will raise in the battle! The shout was given with great alacrity, and the consul promised, invoking good fortune on the enterprise, that he would do as they wished and lead them forth to battle on the morrow. The rest of the day they spent in making ready their arms. Next day, as soon as the Sabines saw the Romans forming, they came out themselves, for they had long been eager to fight. It was a battle such as takes place when both armies are confident; for the glory of the one was ancient and unbroken, and the other was exalted by its recent unaccustomed victory. Moreover the Sabines employed a stratagem to increase their strength; for when they had marshalled a front of equal extent with the Roman, they held two thousand men in reserve to hurl against their opponent's left, as soon as the battle should be under way. These troops, attacking in flank, had almost encompassed that wing, and were beginning to overpower it; when the cavalry of the two legions, numbering about six hundred, leaped down from their horses and rushed to the front, where their comrades were already giving ground. There they made a stand against the foe and at the same time roused the courage of the infantry, first by sharing the danger on equal terms, and then by causing them to feel ashamed. They felt humiliated that the cavalry should be fighting in their own fashion and in that of infantry too, and that the infantry should not be as good as the horsemen, even when these were dismounted. They therefore renewed the battle which on their flank had been given up, and advanced again into the position from which they had retreated, and in a trice the fighting was not merely even, but the Sabine wing had begun to yield. The horsemen, under cover of the ranks of infantry, regained their mounts. Then they galloped across to the other wing, announcing the victory to their friends; and at the same time they made a charge against the enemy, who were already panic-stricken, as they might well be when the stronger of their wings had been defeated. No other troops showed more conspicuous courage in that battle. The consul looked out for every contingency, commended the brave, and upbraided any who fought listlessly. Being rebuked they would at once begin to acquit themselves like men, —shame proving as powerful an incentive to them as praise to the others. With a fresh cheer all along the line the Romans made a concerted effort and drove the enemy back, and from that moment there was no resisting the violence of their onset. The Sabines fled in confusion through the fields and left their camp to be plundered by their foes. There the Romans won back not the possessions of their allies, as on Algidus, but their own which had earlier been lost to them through the raids on their lands. Though a double victory had been gained in two separate battles, the senate was so mean as to decree thanksgivings in the name of the consuls for one day only. The people went unbidden on the second day also in great numbers, to offer up thanks to the gods; and this unorganized and popular supplication was attended with an enthusiasm which almost exceeded that of the other. The consuls had arranged to approach the City within a day of one another, and summoned the senate out into the Campus Martius. While they were there holding forth on the subject of their victories, complaints were made by leading senators that the senate was being held in the midst of the army on purpose to inspire fear. And so the consuls, to allow no room for the accusation, adjourned the senate from that place to the Flaminian Meadows, where the temple of Apollo is now, and which was called even then Apollo's Precinct. When the Fathers, meeting there, refused with great unanimity to grant a triumph, Lucius Icilius the plebeian tribune laid the issue before the people. Many came forward to dissuade them, and Gaius Claudius was particularly vehement. It was a triumph, he said, over the patricians, not Rome's enemies, which the consuls desired; they were seeking a favour in return for personal services they had done the tribune, not an honour in requital of valour. Never before had a triumph been voted by the people; the decision whether this honour had been deserved had always rested with the senate; not even the kings had infringed the majesty of the highest order in the state; let not the tribunes so dominate all things as not to suffer the existence of any public council; if each order retained its own rights and its own dignity, then, and only then, would the state be free and the laws equal for all. After many speeches had been made to the same purpose by the other older members of the senate, all the tribes voted in favour of the motion. Then, for the first time, a triumph which lacked the authorization of the senate was celebrated at the bidding of the people. This victory of the tribunes and the commons had nearly resulted in a dangerous abuse; for the tribunes conspired together to obtain their re-election, and, that their own ambition might be less conspicuous, to procure as well the return to office of the consuls. Their pretext was the solidarity of the patricians, which had operated, by injurious treatment of the consuls, to break down the authority of the tribunes of the plebs. What would happen if, ere the laws were firmly established, the new tribunes should be assailed through the agency of consuls belonging to the patricians' own party? For there would not always be consuls like Valerius and Horatius, who preferred the liberty of the plebs to their own interests. By a fortunate chance in this emergency the superintendence of the elections fell by lot to none other than Marcus Duillius, a far-seeing man who perceived that the re-election of the magistrates would be fraught with odium. But when he asserted that he would not consider the candidacy of any of the former tribunes, his colleagues vehemently insisted that he should receive the suffrages of the tribes without restriction, or else resign the presidency of the election to his fellow-tribunes, who would conduct the voting in accordance with the law rather than the desires of the patricians. A controversy having thus arisen, Duillius summoned the consuls before the benches of the tribunes and asked them what course they meant to pursue in the consular elections; and finding, by their replying that they should have new consuls chosen, that he had got in them popular supporters of his unpopular policy, he went with them before the assembly. When the consuls, on being there brought forth to the people and asked what they would do if the Roman People, mindful of their help in the recovery of liberty at home and remembering their military successes, should again elect them to office, declined to alter their determination, Duillius first praised the consuls for persisting to the end in their unlikeness to the decemvirs, and then held the election. And after five tribunes had been chosen and no other candidates obtained a majority of the tribes, on account of the eagerness with which the nine incumbents openly sought re-election, he dismissed the assembly, nor did he afterwards convene it for an election. He declared that the law had been satisfied, which, without anywhere prescribing the number, provided only that the tribunate should not be left vacant; and directed that those who had been elected should co-opt colleagues. He recited too the formula of the announcement, in which the following words occurred: If I shall call for your suffrages for ten tribunes of the plebs; if for any reason you shall elect to-day less than ten tribunes of the plebs, then let those whom the elected tribunes co-opt as their colleagues be as legally tribunes of the plebs as those whom you shall this day have chosen to that office. Having persevered to the end in denying that the state could have fifteen plebeian tribunes, and having defeated the cupidity of his colleagues, Duillius laid down his magistracy, approved by patricians and plebs alike. The new tribunes of the plebs consulted the wishes of the nobles in the co-optation of colleagues; they even chose two who were patricians and ex-consuls, Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius. The new consuls, Spurius Herminius and Titus Verginius Caelimontanus, being specially devoted neither to the cause of the patricians nor to that of the plebs, enjoyed a peaceful year both at home and abroad. Lucius Trebonius, a tribune of the commons, being angry with the patricians, because, as he said, he had been defrauded by them in the co-optation of the tribunes and had been betrayed by his colleagues, proposed a law that he who called upon the Roman plebs to elect tribunes should continue to call upon them until he should effect the election of ten; and he so baited the nobles during his year of office as even to gain the surname of Asper, or the Truculent. Next, Marcus Geganius Macerinus and Gaius Julius became consuls, and assuaged the strife of the tribunes with the young nobles, without censuring those magistrates or sacrificing the dignity of the patricians. They withheld the plebs from sedition by suspending a levy which had been decreed with a view to making war on the Volsci and the Aequi, averring that so long as the City was quiet their foreign relations were likewise entirely peaceful; that it was discord in Rome which made other nations take heart. The pains they were at to maintain peace were also productive of internal harmony. But the one order was always taking advantage of the moderation of the other; the plebs were tranquil, but the younger patricians began to insult them. When the tribunes attempted to assist the lowly, at first their services were of little effect; and later they did not even escape violence themselves, especially in the last months of their term, since not only were wrongs committed through cabals of the more powerful, but the effectiveness of every magistrate rather languished, as a rule, in the latter part of the year. By this time the plebs had ceased to count upon the tribunate, unless they could have tribunes like Icilius; for two years they had had mere names. The elder patricians, for their part, though they thought their young men too headstrong, yet preferred, if moderation must be left behind, that the excess of spirits should be on their side rather than with their adversaries. So difficult is it to be moderate in the defence of liberty, since everyone, while pretending to seek fair-play, so raises himself as to press another down; while insuring themselves against fear, men actually render themselves fearful to others; and having defended ourselves from an injury, we proceed —as though it were necessary either to do or suffer wrong —to inflict injury upon our neighbour. Titus Quinctius Capitolinus (for the fourth time) and Agrippa Furius were then made consuls. They experienced neither domestic sedition nor foreign war, but were threatened with both. The strife between citizens could now no longer be repressed, since tribunes and plebs alike were inflamed against the patricians, and the trial of one or another of the nobles was continually embroiling the assemblies in new quarrels. At the first disturbance in these meetings the Aequi and Volsci took up arms, as though they had received a signal, and also because their leaders, being eager for plunder, had convinced them that the Romans had found it impossible, the year before, to carry out the levy which they had proclaimed, since the plebs were no longer amenable to authority; and that this had been the reason why armies were not dispatched against themselves. Lawlessness was breaking down their martial traditions, nor was Rome any longer a united nation; all the hostility and quarrelsomeness they had formerly entertained towards other nations was now being turned against themselves; the wolves were blinded with mad rage at one another, and there was now an opportunity to destroy them. Combining their armies, they first desolated the country of the Latins, and then, when it appeared that there was no one in that region to punish them, they carried their marauding, amidst the triumphant rejoicings of the advocates of war, to the very walls of Rome, in the direction of the Esquiline Gate, where they insolently exhibited to the inhabitants of the City the devastation of their lands. After they had withdrawn unmolested, and driving their booty before them had marched to Corbio, the consul Quinctius summoned the people to an assembly. There he spoke, as I understand, to the following effect: "Although I am conscious, Quirites, of no wrong-doing, nevertheless it is with great shame that I have come to this assembly to confront you. To think that you know, to think that future generations will be told, that the Aequi and the Volsci, but now scarce a match for the Hernici, have in the fourth consulship of Titus Quinctius approached the walls of the City of Rome —with impunity, and armed! We have now for a long time been living under such conditions that my mind could foresee nothing good; yet had I known that such a disgrace was in store for this year, of all others, I should have shunned it even at the cost of exile or of death, in default of other means of escaping office. So! Had they been men whose swords were there at our gates, Rome might have been captured in my consulship! I had enjoyed honours enough, I had had enough, and more than enough, of life; death should have come to me in my third consulship. For whom, pray, did the most dastardly of our enemies feel such contempt? For us, the consuls, or for you, Quirites? If the fault is ours, deprive us of authority we do not merit; and if that is not enough, then punish us to boot: if yours, may neither god nor man seek to punish your sins, Quirites; only may you yourselves repent of them! It was not cowardice in you that they despised, nor was it their own courage in which they put their trust; in truth they have been too often beaten and routed, despoiled of their camps, stripped of their lands, and sent under the yoke, not to know both themselves and you: it was the discord betwixt the classes, and the quarrels —poison of this City —between the patricians and the plebs that roused their hopes, as they beheld our greed for power and yours for liberty; your disgust at the patrician magistracies and ours at the plebeian. In Heaven's name what would you have? You conceived a longing for tribunes of the plebs; for the sake of harmony we granted them. You desired decemvirs; we allowed them to be elected. You grew exceedingly weary of the decemvirs; we compelled them to abdicate. When your resentment against them persisted in their retirement to private life, we permitted men of the highest birth and the most distinguished careers to suffer death and exile. Again you desired to choose tribunes of the plebs, and chose them; to appoint consuls of your own faction, and though we saw that this was unfair to the patricians, we beheld even the patrician magistracy presented to the plebs. That you should enjoy the support of tribunes and the right of appeal to the people; that the decrees of the plebs should be made binding upon the patricians; that on the pretext of equalizing the laws our rights should be trodden under foot —all this we have endured and are now enduring. What end will there be to our dissensions? Will a time ever come when we can have a united City? Will a time ever come when this can be our common country? We, the beaten party, accept the situation with more equanimity than do you, the victors. Is it not enough that we must fear you? It was against us that the Aventine was taken; against us that the Sacred Mount was occupied; we have seen the Esquiline almost captured by the enemy, and the Volscian mounting our rampart. The enemy found none to drive him back; against us you show your manhood; against us you have drawn the sword. Come now, when you have laid siege to the senate-house here, and rendered the Forum unsafe, and filled the gaol with our leading men, go out in that same valorous spirit beyond the Esquiline Gate; or if your courage is not equal even to that, behold from the walls how your fields have been laid waste with fire and sword, how your cattle are being driven off, while far and wide the smoke is rising from burning buildings. 'But,' you may say, 'it is the community that suffers by these things: the fields are burned; the City is besieged; the glory of the war rests with the enemy.' How now? In what plight are your private interests? Every man of you will presently be getting from the country a report of his personal losses. Pray what resources do you command for supplying the want of these things? Shall the tribunes restore and make good to you your losses? Resounding words they will pour forth to your hearts' content, and accusations against prominent men, and laws one after another, and assemblies; but from those assemblies there was never one of you returned home the better off in circumstances or in fortune. Has ever one of you carried aught back to wife and children but animosities, complaints, and quarrels, both public and private? —from which you always fly for refuge, not to your own bravery and innocence, but to the help of others. But, by Hercules! when you used to serve under us, the consuls, instead of under tribunes, and in camp instead of in the Forum; when your shout was raised in the battle-line, not the assembly, and caused not the Roman nobles but the enemy to shudder; —in those days, I say, you were wont to capture booty, to strip the enemy of his lands, and crowned with success and glory —for the state no less than for yourselves —to return in triumph to your homes and your household gods; now you suffer the foe to load himself with your riches and depart. Hold fast to your assemblies and live your lives in the Forum; you shall still be pursued by the necessity of that service which you seek to evade. It was hard to march against the Aequi and Volsci; the war is before your gates. If it is not driven back, it will soon be within the walls and will scale Citadel and Capitol and pursue you into your homes. Last year the senate commanded that an army should be levied and led out to Algidus: we are still sitting idly at home, scolding each other like so many women, rejoicing in the temporary peace, and not perceiving that we shall soon be paying for this brief repose with a war many times as great. I know that there are other things more pleasant to hear; but even if my character did not prompt me to say what is true in preference to what is agreeable, necessity compels me. I could wish to give you pleasure, Quirites, but I had far sooner you should be saved, no matter what your feeling towards me is going to be. It has been ordained by nature that he who addresses a crowd for his own selfish ends should be more acceptable to it than he whose mind regards nothing but the general welfare; unless perhaps you suppose that it is for your sakes that the public flatterers —I mean your courtiers of the plebs, who will suffer you neither to be at war nor to keep the peace-are exciting you and urging you on. Once thoroughly aroused you are a source of political advancement or of profit to them; and because they see that so long as the orders are harmonious they themselves count for nothing anywhere, they had rather lead an evil cause than none. If you are capable at last of feeling a disgust for these things, and are willing to resume your fathers' and your own old-fashioned manners, in place of these new-fangled ones, I give you leave to punish me as you like, if within a few days I have not defeated and routed these devastators of our fields, stripped them of their camp, and shifted this alarm of war which now dismays you from our gates and walls to the cities of our enemies. Rarely has the speech of a popular tribune been more agreeable to the plebs than was at that time this speech by the sternest of consuls. Even the young men, who amid such alarms were wont to regard a refusal to enlist as their sharpest weapon against the nobles, began to look forward to war and arms. And the flight of the country-people and the presence of those who had been plundered while on their farms and wounded, and who reported worse outrages than those which met the eyes of the citizens, filled all Rome with resentment. When the senate had met, then in truth all turned to Quinctius, whom they looked on as the sole champion of Roman majesty. The foremost senators declared that his speech had been worthy of the consular authority, worthy of the many consulships he had held in the past, worthy of his whole life, crowded as it had been with honours which, often as he had received them, he had still oftener deserved. Other consuls had either flattered the plebs by betraying the dignity of the patricians, or by harshly inforcing the rights of their order had exasperated the populace while seeking to subjugate them; Titus Quinctius had spoken without forgetting the dignity of the patricians, or the harmony of the orders, or —what was particularly important —the existing crisis. They begged him and his colleague to undertake the guidance of the state; they besought the tribunes to unite with the consuls in a single-minded effort to repel their enemies from the walls of the City, and to cause the plebs to yield obedience to the patricians in so alarming a situation; the appeal to the tribunes came, they said, from their common country, which implored their assistance for its wasted fields and its well-nigh beleaguered City. By general consent a levy was proclaimed and held. The consuls announced in the assembly that there was no time to consider excuses; that all the juniors should present themselves at dawn of the following day in the Campus Martius; that they would take time when the war was over to listen to the excuses of those who had failed to hand in their names; and that any man whose excuse they did not approve would be treated as a deserter. Next day the entire body of young men appeared. The cohorts each chose their own centurions, and two senators were put in command of every cohort. We are told that all these measures were carried out so promptly that the standards were fetched from the treasury by the quaestors that very day, and being carried to the Campus Martius, headed the line of march from the mustering ground at ten o'clock in the morning; and the newly recruited army, with the voluntary escort of a few cohorts of veterans, encamped over night at the tenth mile-stone. The following day brought the enemy into view, and the Roman camp was established close to theirs, near Corbio. On the third day, the Romans being urged on by indignation, and the enemy, who had so often revolted, by the consciousness of their guilt and by despair, no attempt was made to delay the battle. Although the two consuls were of equal authority in the Roman army, yet they made an arrangement which is extremely advantageous in the administration of important measures, by which Agrippa yielded the supreme command to his colleague. The latter, thus preferred, responded courteously to the ready self-effacement of the other by admitting him to a share in his plans and his achievements, and treating him as an equal, despite his inferiority. In the battle-line Quinctius held the right wing, Agrippa the left; to Spurius Postumius Albus, the lieutenant, they gave the centre in charge; and the other lieutenant, Publius Sulpicius, they put in command of the horse. The infantry on the right fought brilliantly, and were vigorously resisted by the Volsci. Publius Sulpicius broke through the enemy's centre with his cavalry. He might have returned to the Roman side the way he went, before the enemy could re-form their broken ranks; but it seemed better to assail them in the rear. It would have been but the work of a moment to charge them from behind and throw them into confusion between the two attacks; but the Volscian and Aequian cavalry met him with his own kind of troops and held him in check for some little while. Thereupon Sulpicius cried out that there was no time for hesitation; they were surrounded and cut off from their fellows, unless they put forth all their might and disposed of the enemy's cavalry. Nor was it enough to rout them and let them get safely off; they must destroy them, horse and man, that none might ride back into the battle or renew the fight. It would be impossible, he said, for their cavalry to resist his men, when the close ranks of their infantry had given way before them. His words did not fall upon deaf ears. With a single rush the Romans routed the entire body of cavalry. Hurling great numbers of them from their horses, they transfixed men and steeds with their javelins. This ended the cavalry-battle. Then they fell upon the hostile infantry, and sent off gallopers to announce their success to the consuls, where the enemy's line was already beginning to give way. The tidings at once aroused fresh ardour in the conquering Romans and filled the faltering Aequi with confusion. It was in the centre that their defeat began, where the attack of the troopers had thrown their ranks into disorder; then the left wing began to fall back before the consul Quinctius. The Romans experienced most difficulty on the right; there Agrippa, young, active, and courageous, perceiving that the battle was everywhere going better than on his own front, snatched the standards from the men who bore them, and began to carry them forward himself, and even to fling some of them into the press of the enemy. The disgrace with which his soldiers were thus threatened spurred them to the attack, and the victory was extended to every part of the line. A message then came from Quinctius, saying that he had beaten the enemy and was already threatening their camp, but did not wish to storm it until he knew that the fight had been decided on the left wing also; if Agrippa had already defeated his opponents, let him bring up his troops, that the entire army might enter together into possession of the spoils. The victorious Agrippa accordingly joined his victorious colleague, with mutual congratulations, in front of the enemy's camp. Its handful of defenders was speedily put to flight, and the Romans burst into the entrenchments without encountering resistance. The consuls led their army back to the City laden with a vast quantity of booty, as well as with the goods which they had lost by the pillage of their fields but had now recovered. I do not find either that the consuls themselves asked for a triumph or that one was offered them by the senate; nor is there any record of the reason why they despised the honour or did not hope for it. The best conjecture I myself can offer, after so long an interval of time, is this: since the consuls Valerius and Horatius, who besides beating the Volsci and Aequi had also attained renown by bringing the Sabine war to a successful conclusion, had been refused a triumph by the senate, they were ashamed to ask for that distinction in recompense of an achievement only half as great, lest even if it should be granted, it might seem that account had been taken rather of persons than of deserts. The glory of defeating the enemy was sullied by a shameful judgment given by the people in Rome regarding the boundaries of her allies. The men of Aricia and those of Ardea had often gone to war over a territory which both cities claimed. Exhausted by the many defeats which each had experienced, they referred their quarrel to the Roman People for decision. When they had come to plead their cause, and a popular assembly had been granted them by the magistrates, they argued their respective claims with great vehemence. The testimony had already been taken, and the time had come for the tribes to be summoned and the people to give their votes, when Publius Scaptius, an aged plebeian, arose and said: If I am permitted, consuls, to speak concerning the nation's interests, I will not suffer the people to go wrong in this matter. The consuls declared that he was an untrustworthy fellow and ought not to be listened to, and when he protested noisily that the public cause was being betrayed, they ordered him to be removed; whereat he appealed to the tribunes. The tribunes, as almost always happens, were swayed by the crowd, instead of swaying it, and, to please the greedy ears of the plebs, gave Scaptius leave to say what he wished. He therefore began, and said that he was eighty-two years old and had fought in the army, in that district which was under discussion, not as a youth, but as one already in his twentieth year of service at the time of the campaign before Corioli. Hence it came that he was telling them of a matter forgotten with the lapse of years, but fixed in his own memory, namely that the disputed land had been a part of the territory of Corioli, and had consequently, on the capture of that town, become, by right of conquest, the property of the Roman People. He marvelled, he said, at the effrontery with which the men of Ardea and Aricia hoped to deprive the Roman People —whom they had made the judge, in place of being the owner —of a territory over which they had never exercised any authority so long as the state of Corioli was intact. He had himself but a little while to live; yet he had not been able to convince himself that, having as a soldier done his part to conquer the land, he should not defend it, even in his old age, with the only weapon left him, to wit his voice. He earnestly counselled the people not to condemn their own cause from an unreasonable motive of propriety. When the consuls had perceived that Scaptius was listened to not only in silence but actually with approval, they called on gods and men to witness that a great outrage was being perpetrated, and sent for the leaders of the senate. With them they went about among the tribes and implored them not to be guilty of an act which, utterly wrong in itself, would establish a precedent that was even worse, by diverting to their own possession, as judges, the property in dispute; and that too when, even if it were right that a judge should be concerned for his own advantage, they would by no means gain so much by the seizure of the land as they would lose by the wrongful estrangement of their allies. For reputation at least and trustworthiness were things the loss of which was beyond all reckoning. Was this to be the report carried home by the envoys? Was this to be noised abroad and come to the ears of allies and enemies? What grief it would cause the former, and what joy the latter! Did they suppose that Scaptius, a meddling old hanger-on of assemblies, would be held responsible for this by the neighbouring nations? It would be a famous thing for Scaptius to have inscribed beneath his portrait, but the Roman People would be playing a role of chicanery and of usurpation of the claims of others. For what umpire in a private suit would have thought of awarding to himself the object of litigation? Even Scaptius, though he had already outlived all sense of shame, would not do that. These arguments were loudly urged both by the consuls and by the Fathers; but they were less convincing than men's cupidity, or than Scaptius, who had aroused it. The tribes, being called upon to vote, decided the territory to be public land belonging to the Roman People. Nor is it denied that such would have been the verdict if recourse had been had to another court; but in the circumstances the excellence of the cause did not in the slightest degree extenuate the disgrace of the judgment, which seemed no less scandalous and harsh to the Roman senators than to the men of Aricia and Ardea. The remainder of the year passed without disturbances in either domestic or foreign relations.

Perseus Latin. CTS URN phi0914.phi0013.perseus-eng1. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.