The Comic History of Rome

By another clause in the act, those insolvent debtors who had been converted into "alarming sacrifices!" and were reduced to slavery, because their creditors "must have cash," or its equivalent, were restored to freedom. The ceremony of manumission was curious, and comprised so many indignities done to the slave, that, although free, he could not have been very easy under the process. He was first taken before the Consul by his master, who gave him a blow on the cheek, which was rather a back-handed mode of making an independent man of him. The Consul then laid his wand about the insolvent's back, at the same time declaring him perfectly free, and telling him to go about his business – if he happened to have any. The beating having been gone through, there was still more lathering to be endured; for the head of the freedman was closely shaved, as a precaution, perhaps, against his going mad on the attainment of his liberty. His release from his chains was not complete until he had been deprived of his locks; and to crown all, he was invested with that emblem of butchery in a political, as well as a social point of view, the red cap of liberty.

During the internal quarrels of Rome, agriculture had been so thoroughly neglected, that the harvest had completely fallen to the ground, or, rather, had never come out of it. The husbandman had husbanded nothing, either for himself or others; and as nothing had been sown but civil dissension, there was nothing to reap but the fruit of it. The Romans, who, until lately, had been thirsting for power, were now hungry for food; and, to prevent the people from dying at home, envoys were sent to scour the surrounding countries, – a process which involved many a brush with the inhabitants. It is stated, by some historians, that, during the famine, an order was forwarded to Gelo, of Syracuse, for corn, which that individual was quite ready to supply, but for which he was so thoroughly unbusiness-like as to refuse the money. The incident, though utterly without commercial interest, would have been pleasing in a different point of view, were it not for the stern realities of chronology, which prove that Gelo could not have acted as a gratuitous corn-dealer at the time specified, for he was not alive at the period.

While Rome was suffering from want of corn, it was wasting the very flower of its population in a war with the Volscians. Among the most distinguished warriors on the side of the Romans was Caius Marcius, a young patrician, who led all his own clients into an action in which the defendants – the unfortunate Volscians – were subjected to enormous damages. He subsequently proceeded against Corioli, which made an obstinate defence; but was ultimately beaten, and compelled to pay the whole of the costs of the conflict. From this affair he took the name of Coriolanus, by which he is better known than by his original appellation of C. Marcius, for mankind will too often award the largest measure of fame to the most extensive perpetrator of mischief; and he who would carve himself a name, may carve it much more deeply and durably with the sword than with any other instrument.

When the corn arrived from Sicily, the popular party proposed a gratuitous distribution of the boon; but the patricians, headed by Coriolanus, who was a tyrant in grain, recommended that the plebeians should pay for what they required. Complaint is never so open-mouthed as when it has nothing to eat; and the people became desperate when they found Coriolanus advising, without a scruple, that not a grain should be given, nor an ear lent to their sufferings. He proposed the abolition of the Tribunes as the condition of food being supplied to the people; but they, becoming every day more crusty from the want of bread, insisted on his being tried for treason. Coriolanus saw the people waxing resolute to seal his doom, and he accordingly made his escape, so that when the time came for him to be tried, he was found wanting. Judgment went against him by default; his name was struck out of the list of patricians – a sort of peerage of the period. He was sentenced, moreover, to aquæ et ignis interdictio– prohibition from fire and water; a punishment which, looking at the fiery nature of all spirituous liquors, may be fancifully supposed to have involved especially a stoppage of grog, as it certainly prevented everybody from entertaining him. This sentence amounted, in fact, to banishment; and, indeed, it was designed to do so; for the interdiction of fire and water left the culprit nothing on earth but air, which of course it was quite impossible to live upon.

Stung with what he called the ingratitude of his countrymen, though they had really not much to thank him for, Coriolanus, in a spirit not very magnanimous, proceeded to offer his services to the enemy. Taking leave of his wife Volumnia, a voluminous woman, who had had greatness thrust upon her by nature to an awkward extent, he departed for the country of the Volscians, and arrived at Antium about supper time. His name was taken up at once to Attius Tullius, who, though sitting at his meal with the usual accompaniment of manus unctæ, or greasy hands, determined not to allow the illustrious stranger to slip through his fingers. Coriolanus was hospitably entertained, and induced to take the command of the Volscian army against the Roman colonists. He drove them from place to place until he had got them up against the Cluilian ditch, and into it many were thrown; a sad proof of his animosity having been carried to a pitch that must always leave a black stain on his memory. Here also he pitched his tent within almost a stone's throw of Rome; and as the plebeians were unwilling to fight, ambassadors were sent to entreat Coriolanus to lay down his sword; but, contemptuously folding his arms, he returned no answer. The priests next tried their powers of persuasion, but though they did all they could to convert Coriolanus to the cause of Rome, it was not until female influence was brought into requisition, that the attempt proved successful. His mother Veturia, accompanied by his considerably better half, Volumnia, and a party of Roman ladies made up for the occasion, visited him at his camp, when the clamour of the strong-minded, the sighs and sobs of the weaker, the sneers of some, the tears of others, and the importunity of all, proved irresistible. He had been resolute for some time; but when his wife, with a heavy heart added to her natural weight, fell upon his neck, he seemed to be sinking under that which he could no longer stand up against.

His mother, Veturia, following up the advantage that had been gained, tried the power of the female tongue, to which time seems to go on adding all the force of which it deprives the rest of the body. The old lady raved and shouted with a degree of anile energy that struck Coriolanus with dismay; and when she threw herself on the ground, declaring he should walk over her body if he attempted to march upon Rome, he felt that he could not take another step without trampling on the tenderest relations of humanity. With Volumnia hanging to his neck, and Veturia clinging to his heels, – with a wife pouring the loudest lamentations into his ear, – with a mother cursing everything in general, but his own birthday in particular, – with a bevy of Roman ladies shrieking and sobbing in the background, – Coriolanus could no longer resist, but ordered his camp to be broken up, and led his legions back again. Tradition differs as to the date of the death of Coriolanus, who, according to some accounts, sunk under the attack made upon him by the weaker sex; while others assert that he lived to a good old age, which is likely to have been the case, if the scene we have described was not immediately the death of him – for the constitution that could have survived so severe a trial must have been of a strength truly wonderful.

Coriolanus has been held up as a model of disinterestedness, but we cannot help setting him down as a selfish upstart, who turned traitor to his country, because it did not form the highest estimate of his personal merits. His deserts are overbalanced by the fact of his being a deserter; and it was, assuredly, the reverse of magnanimity to evince his spite against the nation to which he belonged, merely because his own value had not been put upon his own services. Such is our view of Coriolanus without the masquerade dress in which he has been often made to appear; for truth compels us to take off the gilt in which he has hitherto shone, and to substitute the guilt that really belongs to him.

The Temple of Fortuna Muliebris was raised, in compliment to the women who, by their hysterical, and now historical efforts, were said to have saved Rome; and indeed, considering the frequency with which female influence operates the other way, the fact of its having been exercised for the prevention of mischief, deserves the commemoration of a monument.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

FROM THE CLOSE OF THE WAR WITH THE VOLSCIANS TO THE PASSING OF THE BILL OF TERENTILLUS

After the war with the Volscians was at an end, the Romans are said to have entered into a treaty with their former foe, the object of which was a sort of partnership in plunder; it being agreed that the new allies should take the field together, and divide the produce. Ill-gotten gain is never a source of real profit; and the land stolen in war became a ground of contention among the Romans. The patricians had hitherto grasped the whole of the conquered soil, though they could not do so with clean hands; and Spurius Cassius proposed that the plebeians should have a share of it. The suggestion, though violently resisted, became the law of the land; but the land was not appropriated in conformity with the law until a much later period. Spurius Cassius did not long survive, when the year of his Consulship had expired; for the patricians caused him to be impeached, and his head was struck off upon a block, though, from the services he had performed, it deserved rather to have been struck off upon a medal.

The patricians tried to divert the attention of the plebeians from domestic affairs by leading them constantly into battle; but the latter, though compelled to march into the field, would take no steps to secure a victory. Like horses brought to the water but refusing to drink, the soldiers, though conducted to the field, evinced no thirst for blood; but firmly declining to aim a single blow, they presented a striking picture of passive disobedience. In vain did the officers suggest, that for those ambitious of a soldier's grave, there was at length an eligible opening; they would gain no laurels, but allowed themselves to be kept at bay; they laughed outright at their commanders, and, instead of straining every nerve for success, they kept their risible muscles only in full exercise.

There existed at this time a gens in Rome which had managed to obtain such a share of power for itself, that it was generally recognised as the governing family. The gens alluded to was that of the Fabii, whose union formed their chief strength; for no member of the family, though he might be unmindful of his antecedents, was ever known to forget his relatives. The Fabii derived their name from Faba, a bean, because their ancestors had cultivated that kind of pulse; but in later times the gens became remarkable for feeling the popular pulse, and making a cat's-paw of the patricians. By an arrangement with the order to which they belonged, the Fabii were ensured one of the consulships, on condition of their influencing their clients to elect a patrician to the other; and thus both the people and the senate were played off against each other for the special advantage of the "family." Fortunately for society, there is in all corruption a rottenness which is always bringing it towards its conclusion while it seems to be gaining its end; and the usual difficulty of getting unprincipled men to hang long together by a rope of sand, was illustrated in the case of the patricians and the Fabii. The quarrels among themselves helped to render them contemptible to the plebeians, and the troops had become so accustomed to treat their leaders with disrespect, that many an intended fight ended without a sword being taken from its sheath, and nothing was drawn but the battle.

One of the Consuls had, for several years, been chosen from the family of the Fabii; when its members growing tired, at last, of their patrician stock being a laughing-stock to the army, determined to make themselves popular. Marcus Fabius won the hearts of the soldiers, by dressing their wounds, and promising to redress their grievances. Kæso Fabius, his successor, recommended the distribution of the land among the plebeians, by whose sweat it had been gained; but he had not been always equally anxious to acknowledge the claims of popular perspiration; for he had been one of those who condemned Spurius Cassius for having made a similar proposition.

Tradition states that the Fabii afterwards emigrated in a body, upwards of three hundred strong, taking with them four thousand clients; but whether the clients went at their own solicitation, or whether the Fabii were the solicitors, we are not in a position to determine. It is said that the whole party of four thousand three hundred went into action together, and paid with their lives the costs of the sad affair; but the critical authorities doubt the whole story; and it is satisfactory to our best feelings to know that we, on this point, know nothing.[17 - Among the other difficulties of this story is the comparatively trifling one, that the Fabian race did not become extinct; but tradition hops over this dilemma, by leaving one of the family behind to serve as a father to future Fabii.]

The Etrurians soon after wasted the country near Rome, and wasted their own time into the bargain, for they were at last glad to treat, though not until they had retreated. A peace was concluded; and the parties held their peace for forty years, – or, at all events, if they ever had words, they did not come to blows during that lengthened period.

As some of the events recorded in this chapter arose out of the Roman law of debtor and creditor, it may be just as well to include in this account a few items of a commercial character. When a man ran into debt, he was almost sure to be brought to a stand-still, for compound interest continued to accrue so rapidly that there was no chance of compounding with those to whom he owed money. Thirty days after a debt being demanded, the defaulter was handed over to his creditor, and bound with a cord, by way of accord and satisfaction; but, at the end of sixty days, a crier, whose office was enough to make him shed tears, advertised the insolvent for sale as a slave in the market-place. It is not surprising that the plebeians should rise against their being put up to this degrading auction, more particularly when the masters to whom they were knocked down were in the habit of beating and cruelly ill-treating them. The patricians laid violent hands, not only upon the plebeians, but upon all the property of the State, assuming to the utmost all its rights, and repudiating all its duties. They took as a matter of right all the offices of state; and so complete was the seizure made by the patricians of every thing in the shape of a Government situation, that the name of the order which absorbed to itself all the good things is to be traced in the modern word "patronage." The whole of the profits of war went into the pockets of the upper class; and though the plebeians drew the sword, the patricians drew whatever money was to be obtained from the enemy.

The patricians, however, were not allowed to exercise their tyranny always without resistance; for, if their conduct was revolting to human nature, it was to be expected that human nature would revolt against them when opportunity offered. An instance occurred during the Consulship of Appius Claudius, who had been elected by the senate, and who, wishing to levy troops, caused the names of all the men between eighteen and forty-five to be called over in a list, which furnished the materials for enlistment. Amongst the names was that of Publilius Volero, who had formerly held a commission as a centurion, or captain; and, being now selected to serve as a common soldier, declared indignantly that rather than go as a private into the ranks, he would continue in a private station. Publilius, in fact, kicked violently against the orders of the Consul, and being a man of very powerful stamp, it was felt that when Publilius kicked in earnest, there was something on foot that it was not easy to contend against. Appius intimating that the Consuls must be obeyed, desired one of the lictors to do his duty; when Volero, being a strong and robust man, received the lictor with open arms, and lifting him from the ground, gave him a setting down that shook the nerves of the astonished officer. Having thrown the lictor on the ground, where the unhappy functionary took his own measure, instead of carrying out those of his superiors, Volero threw himself on the public, upon whom he made a very strong impression.

Publilius from this moment had considerable weight with the plebeians, who made him one of their Tribunes; and he at once proposed a large measure of reform in the mode of electing those officers. He suggested an extension of the suffrage, by giving it to the tribes instead of the centuries; and public meetings were got up in support of the project. These meetings were attended by the patricians, and disturbances ensued, owing to the attempts of one party to put the other party down; for public discussion in all ages seems to have been conducted on the principle that it is to be all on one side, and that any opinion opposed to that of the majority is not to be listened to. When the strength of lungs happens to be with the party having the strength of argument, there is not much harm done; but as the patricians and plebeians mustered in nearly equal numbers at the meetings alluded to, personal altercations frequently took place; and the Tribunes as well as the Consuls sent their respective officers to arrest each other.

At length Lætorius, who had been elected as the colleague of Publilius Volero, marched into the Forum with an armed force, determined that he would that morning carry the day; and as he drew his sword, he declared he would go through with it. The patricians, losing their own resolution, offered to agree to any that he might propose; but, refusing to trust them, he took possession of the Capitol, as a guarantee for the fulfilment of their promise. The Lex Publilia was accordingly passed, to the great annoyance of Appius, who always treated the plebeians as if different sorts of clay, as well as different moulds, were employed by Nature in her great man – ufacture. When his year of office was over, he was impeached by the Tribunes; but on the day when the trial ought to have come on, the worldly trials of Appius were all past, for he died the night before the cause stood for hearing. Posterity has agreed on the verdict which the judges were not required to pronounce; and it has even been said that he fell by his own hand, in consequence of his sense of guilt preventing him from knowing how to acquit himself.

To add to its troubles, Rome was visited by a double plague, in the shape of an external foe and an internal pestilence. The enemy having approached the gates of the city, the country people had taken refuge inside the walls, bringing with them their cattle in such numbers that the place was literally littered with pigs, while the oxen and sheep were packed in pens to an extent of which our own pen can furnish but a faint outline. The summer was at the height of its heat, and the sufferings of the poor dumb animals, as they lost their fat, and met their fate, were enough to melt not only a heart of stone, but many a stone of suet. The foe, fearing from the pestilence a plaguy deal of trouble, broke up their camp; and Rome was allowed to enjoy an interval of peace, though disease did more havoc than might have been expected at the hands of an enemy.

We now come to the legend of Cincinnatus; and though it is no better than a legend, which, as the smallest student will be aware, is so called from legendum, a thing to be read, we must proceed upon the assumption that, as it is a thing to be read, it is à fortiori a thing to be written. Lucius Quinctius, surnamed Cincinnatus from his curly locks – for nature had dressed his hair to a turn – was of a high patrician family. He passed his life as a country gentleman occupying his own estate, and occupying himself in looking after it. His land, it must be admitted, was better cultivated than his manners, which were haughty and imperious. His virtues were all of the domestic kind; he was equally attached to his wife and his farm, and he was an excellent husband, as well as a good husbandman.

It happened that Rome was in such a perilous state as to need a strong hand, when Cincinnatus, being famed for the use of the spade, was invited to leave his otium cum dig.– as everybody knows already, and somebody may have said before – that he might assume the office of dictator. When the messengers arrived from the senate, Cincinnatus was at work in the fields, perhaps sowing up some old tares, or examining the state of his pulse – a favourite crop in those days – or cutting out the sickliest of his corn with the sickle. The soil being loamy, and Cincinnatus being in the thick of his work, he was not very presentable; but hastily throwing his toga round him, he made the best appearance he could before the messengers of the senate. They at once hailed him as dictator, and carried him to Rome, where he called out every man capable of bearing arms; and every man thus called out, accepted the patriotic challenge. Every soldier was to carry with him food for five days, and twelve stakes cut into lengths to form a barricade; so that, as the stakes weighed several pounds, and the eatables were solid, the burden of each man, together with his accoutrements – which included a cask on the head from which the perspiration poured – must have been inconveniently ponderous. Notwithstanding their heavy load, the legend, which is less weighty than their equipments, goes on to state that the soldiers started at sunset, with Cincinnatus at their head, and reached the camp, a distance of two-and-twenty miles, at a quick march, or rather at a fast trot, by midnight. Though the story runs thus, we are compelled to doubt the running of the troops, who, with their legs encumbered by their arms and other equipments, must have found speed impossible. On arriving at Mount Algidus, where the enemy was encamped, Cincinnatus made his soldiers surround the place, and by aiming at all in the ring, they were sure to hit somebody. Finding themselves in the midst of a circle by no means social, the Æquians sued for mercy; but Cincinnatus threw Gracchus Clœlius and his lieutenants into chains, which was equivalent to making them enter into bonds for their future good behaviour. Clœlius continued in his command after having been thus formally tied down, and Cincinnatus returned to Rome in triumph. Having held the dictatorship only sixteen days, he laid it quietly down, and returning to his farming operations, after having submitted the enemy to the yoke, he fitted it once more to the necks of his oxen.

While engaged in fighting with an external enemy, a nation often forgets the foes she has within; and it is the cruel policy of despotism to waste the popular energy on quarrels with strangers, in order to divert the attention of the public from domestic grievances. The war being ended, the people began to look at home, and they soon perceived that, while the sword of aggression had been in constant use, the sword of justice had been rusting in the scabbard, or had been only drawn forth to inflict, occasionally, a wound on public liberty. A movement arose in favour of law reform, and C. Terentillus Arsa brought in a bill for getting the patricians and plebeians to a better understanding, by putting them on nearly the same footing. The measure led to considerable agitation; for, though the tribunes passed it, the senate could not get over it at all; and, the latter having thrown it out, the former brought in a bill, containing a great deal more than the original demand, in the year following. In political, as well as pecuniary affairs, a just claim carries interest, which accumulates as long as the claim remains unsatisfied; and every day, while it augments the debt due, increases the difficulty of meeting it.

The proposition of Terentillus was much discussed in large assemblies, the harmony of which was disturbed by some of the young patricians; for, even in the early days of which we write, the noble art of laughing down, or crowing over a discomfited orator, was understood by some of the juvenile scions of aristocracy. It happened that Cincinnatus had four sons, who were exceedingly fine young men, with very coarse manners. One of them, named Kæso, was continually getting into street rows, or disturbing public meetings; and frequently went so far as to interfere with Virginius, a tribune, in the execution of his duty. The officer was for a long time patient; but, at length, was goaded to take the matter, as well as the offender, up; and Kæso was charged with a series of assaults, of a more or less aggravated and aggravating character. While these accusations were hanging over him, an old case of manslaughter came to light; the victim having been an aged invalid, whom Kæso, in a disreputable night brawl, had cruelly maltreated. He was already under heavy sureties when this fresh charge was brought up, and, to avoid meeting it, this proud patrician ran away from his bail, leaving their recognizances to be forfeited.

Reports were soon afterwards spread, that the man who had left the city as a contemptible runaway, was about to return to it in the more formidable character of a robber and a murderer. One night when the people had gone to bed, many of them heard in their sleep the trampling of horses, which seemed to come like a tremendous nightmare over the city. Presently a shout arose, which beat upon the drum of every ear like a call to battle. The Consuls sprang out of bed, and throwing about them the first substitute for a toga that the bedclothes presented, they made at once for the walls of the city. The plebeians, when called upon, refused to serve; and the Consuls, feeling how weak they were in going to the wall alone, made the usual promises, which the people, as usual, were induced to discount, at a great personal sacrifice. Proceeding to the Capitol, they found it in the possession of a large band of exiles and runaway slaves, who would have been glad to run away a second time, had escape been possible. Many fell, and were felled to the earth, on both sides, while P. Valerius after putting several to the sword, had the sword put to him in a most uncomfortable manner.

The exiles took nothing by their expedition as far as the attack was concerned; but many of them owed something to the expedition with which they fled from the contest. After this battle, all traces of Kæso Quinctius are lost; but whether he fell in the fray, or whether the thread of his existence was frayed out in some other way, is a mystery we have no means of unravelling.

Appius Claudius was now called upon, as the surviving partner of P. Valerius, to redeem the pledge given by the latter; but Appius, with a chicanery worthy of Chancery in its best, or rather in its worst days, pleaded the death of his colleague as a bar to the suit, declaring that both consuls must be joined in it, though he knew all the while that a bill of revivor for the purpose of including the deceased consul was quite impossible. During these unhappy differences between the two orders, many of the leading plebeians were murdered at the instigation of the patricians, who, however, were rapidly cutting their own throats; for violence, while it thinned the body, added to the stoutness of heart of the popular party. The tribunes were increased in number from five to ten; and, somewhat later, a still higher point was gained for the plebeians by limiting to a couple of sheep and thirty beeves the fines to which they were liable. These exactions were, however, enforced with such rigour that the tenderest lamb was allowed no quarter if a fine had been incurred, and the smallest stake in the country – if the stake happened to be beef – was seized without remorse if the owner had become subject to a penalty.

It was many years before the Bill of Terentillus – which has been specially noted – was at length taken up, when the patricians graciously consented to a change in the laws, and offered the benefit of their services into the bargain, by taking upon themselves to determine the sort of change that was required. Hitting, by anticipation, on the modern expedient for delaying useful measures, the patricians appointed a select committee to inquire into law reform, and, by way of rendering the chances of legislation still more remote, they ordered the members to proceed to Athens, where, under the enervating influence of Attic associations, they were likely to go to sleep over the subject of their labours. The special commissioners became, no doubt, so thoroughly Greek in all their ideas, that, even the preparation of their report was deferred until the Greek Kalends.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DECEMVIRATE TO THE TAKING OF VEII

The Romans, being at peace abroad, began to think of improving the means of quarrelling among themselves at home, and a desire for law reform became general. Three senators had been sent to Athens to collect information, but what they picked up in Greece was so thoroughly Greek to them, that they were obliged to get it translated into Latin by one Hermodorus, an Ephesian refugee, before they could understand a word of it.[18 - It has been often a subject of regret that the particulars of this expedition have not been handed down to us, and that the three Roman excursionists did not put their heads together to form a log during their voyage. It is, however, seldom that the marine expeditions of the sages are fully detailed, for nothing can be scantier than the account of the journey of the three wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl; and there is reason to believe that many a chapter has been lost to the philosophical transactions of the world, by the chapter of nautical accidents.] As one job naturally leads to another, it was arranged that three commissioners having been employed in cramming, the process of digesting should be entrusted to ten more, who were called the Decemviri. These were appointed from the patricians, after a struggle on the part of the plebeians to get five selected from their own order; but, with a laudable regard to public order, they withdrew their opposition. The especial object for which the Decemviri had been appointed was to frame a new code of laws, but it seems to have been always understood that the practical purpose of a commission is to delay an object, quite as much as to further it. Lest the Decemviri should proceed too rapidly with the work they had been specially chosen to do, arrangements were made for distracting their attention from it by throwing on them the whole business of Government. Had they been modern commissioners of inquiry, they would have needed no excuse for delay; but, with a stubborn resolution to get through their task, they surmounted, or avoided, the obstacles they might have been excused for stumbling at. Instead of making their administrative duties an interruption to their legislative labours, and urging the necessity for attending to both as a plea for the performance of neither, the commissioners took the sovereignty in rotation for five days at a time, and as ten rulers acting all at once would have kept nothing straight, this arrangement for obtaining the strength of unity was altogether a judicious one. At the expiration of their year of office the Decemviri had completed a system of laws, which was engraved on ten tables; – a proof of the industry of the Government of the day, for in these times it would be hopeless to expect ten tables from those who might be, at the same time, forming a cabinet.

Though the Decemviri had done enough to win the public favour, they had left enough undone to afford a pretext for the prolongation of their powers. It was suggested that though the ten tables were very good as far as they went, there was room for two more; and to give an opportunity for this small sum in addition being completed, the continuance of the decemviral form of government was agreed upon. As the time for the election approached, the most disgraceful election intrigues were practised, and in order to disqualify Appius Claudius – one of the former Decemviri – the patricians put him in the chair, or elected him president, on the day of the nomination of the candidates. Appius had for some time been acting the character of the "people's friend," and he had shown himself a consummate actor, for, being a tyrant by nature, he must have been wholly indebted to art for appearing otherwise. Having been called upon to preside, he opened the business of the day by proposing nine names of little note – including five plebeians – and then, with an air of frankness, he suggested himself as a fit and proper person to complete the number. The people – surprised and amused at the coolness of the proposition – proceeded to elect the very candid candidate, who, being joined with a number of nonentities, formed the unit to the ten of which the rest composed the cipher. Soon after their election, the new Decemviri proceeded to complete the twelve tables – and as they formed the origin of the Civil Law, embodying principles which the best jurists have been unable to improve – we will spread these tables before the student, and ask him to sit down with us for a few moments over them.

We cannot promise him any other than a dry repast, with little or nothing to whet his curiosity; and unless his appetite for information is extremely vigorous, there will be little to suit his taste on those plates of bronze or ivory – the material is immaterial, and has been variously described – on which the provisions we are about to serve up were originally carved.

The first table coincided in some respects with our County Courts Act, and furnished a cheap mode of bringing a defendant into court by a simple summons, though if he refused to walk, a mule, an appropriate type of obstinacy, was to be provided for him.

By the second table, it was justifiable to kill a thief in the night; but a person robbed in the day was to have the thief as his slave; a privilege equal to that of being allowed to take into your service, as your page, the urchin who has just picked your pocket. Such an exploit would no doubt indicate a smart lad, and, in order to make him literally smart, the Roman law, in the spirit of our Juvenile Offenders Act, ordered the knave a whipping.

The third table was in some respects an interest table; for it prohibited the taking of more than 12 per cent. on a loan; but if a debtor did not pay within thirty days, he might be bound with chains; an arrangement by which his exertions to get out of difficulty must have been grievously fettered. Having been made to enter into these unprofitable bonds for sixty days, the debtor, if his creditors were more than one, might have been divided between them; but human nature must have found it difficult, under such circumstances, to declare a dividend.

The fourth table seems hardly to have a sound leg to stand upon; for it gave a father the right of life and death over all his children, together with the privilege of selling them. To prevent a parent from pursuing a disgraceful traffic in a series of alarming sacrifices of his family stock, he was not permitted to sell the same child more than three times over, when the infant was permitted to go into the market on his own account, free of all filial duty.

The fifth table related to the estates of deceased persons; and if a freedman died without a will or a direct heir, the law provided for the distribution of his goods without providing for his family. Fallacious hopes among poor relations were checked by handing over to the patron all that remained; and thus the client may be said to have been subject to costs, even after the debt of nature had been satisfied.

In the sixth table, there is nothing worthy of remark; but the seventh guards against damage done by quadrupeds, and not only meets the old familiar case of the donkey among the chickens, but declares that any one wilfully treading on a neighbour's corn shall pay a suitable penalty.

Agriculture was protected by making it a capital offence to blast by incantation another's wheat; so that had the farmers of the day moaned over each other's ruined prospects as they have done in more recent times, performing a sort of incantation by singing the same old song of despair, they might have been liable to lose their heads in the literal as well as in the intellectual sense of which the phrase is susceptible. By the same table, a man breaking another's limb was exposed to retaliation; and a simple fracture was compensated by a simple fracture, though the parties were allowed to compound if they preferred doing so.

The eighth table was equivalent to a Building Act; and by providing a space of two feet and a half between house and house, it prevented collisions among neighbours; while the fruit dropping from one person's tree into another's garden, fell by law into the hands of the latter.

The purity of justice was provided for by the ninth table, which ordered the execution of a judge who accepted a bribe in the execution of his office. It inflicted the same penalty on a corrupt arbitrator, or – that greater traitor still – the wretch who should deliver up a Roman citizen to the enemy.

The tenth table might teach a lesson to our own enlightened age, in which it is too generally the custom to waste in hollow and costly ceremonies over the dead, much that might be made serviceable to the living. More than twenty centuries have passed since the Roman law-makers seeing how mourners might be caught by the undertakers in the traps and trappings of woe, limited to a certain sum the costs of a funeral. The outlay upon the "infernal deities," to whom sacrifices were made in those days, and to whom, therefore, we may compare the black job-masters of our own time, was also reduced to the very lowest figure. In measures of health the Romans were equally in advance of us; for we still accumulate our dead in the grave-yards of our towns, though by the laws of the twelve tables, burials within the city were prohibited.

The eleventh and twelfth tables have come down to us in such mere fragments, that it is difficult to make up an entire leaf from both of them put together. To the eleventh, is attributed the aristocratic provision against marriages between the patricians and the plebeians; but as the law could not always prevent a flame, it was at last found expedient to allow a match which was permitted five years later by the Lex Canuleia.[19 - "Law of the Twelve Tables," B.C. 450. "Lex Canuleia," B.C. 445.]

Such is a brief account of the Laws of the Twelve Tables; which although cut up by the shears of time into very little bits, say much, in broken sentences, to the honour of their authors. Even as late as the days of Cicero, it was a part of a boy's education to learn these laws as a carmen necessarium– or necessary verse – though they were not necessarily in verse at all; for the better opinion is, that they were all in prose, and that they were, in fact, as free from rhyme as they were full of reason.

The Decemvirs had now completed their allotted task; but, though elected for a limited time, they seemed determined to remain in their offices after their office hours were fairly over. During the first Decemvirate the members had taken the Government alternately for twenty-four hours at a time, on the principle of every lucky dog having his day: but now the whole ten assumed, at once, the insignia of royalty. Unable to resist the fascination of the fasces, the Decemvirs were each of them preceded, when they walked abroad, by a bundle of those imposing sticks; the sight of which, at last, aroused public attention to the number of rods that might be in pickle for the backs of the people.

Murmurs at home were echoed by rumours of war abroad; the Æquians and Sabines had renewed their hostility; and the Decemvirs, who could not levy troops or money, summoned the country gentlemen from their seats out of town to their seats in the senate. Many honourable members protested strongly against the Government, but agreed to the necessary supplies; from which it seems that the practice of speaking one way and voting another is a very ancient one. The Decemvirs stuck to their places with an adhesiveness that might suggest a comparison with Roman cement, but for the fact that the adhesiveness is not uncommon in modern times, though the secret of the Roman cement has perished. Armies were despatched to meet the foe, the people having met the expenses, and Appius remained at home with one of his colleagues. The Roman forces abroad had to contend with internal as well as external enemies; for a venerable, but too garrulous soldier, one Dentatus, called also Siccius, was constantly declaring himself heartily sick of the tyranny of the Decemvirs. He had even talked of another secession of the plebs; and, to prevent him from taking himself off, a plan was formed to cut him off by a summary process. He received orders from his superior officer to go up the country, with a few others, and select a spot where a tent might be pitched, in the event of a pitched battle. His companions were assassins in disguise, who, on arriving at a lonely spot, threw off their masks, and appeared in their true features. They immediately fell upon the astonished Dentatus; who must have seen through his assailants before he died, for many were found perforated with the sword of the veteran.

While the rest of the Decemvirs were disgusting the people by their tyranny, Appius was proceeding to render himself one of those objects of contempt at which not only the Roman nose, but the nose of all humanity, was destined to turn up, and at which scorn was to point her imperishable finger-post.

A centurion, named Virginius, had an only daughter, named Virginia, whom her father, with a want of caution pardonable, perhaps, in a widower, permitted to go backwards and forwards alone through the public streets to a private day-school.[20 - It seems, however, to have been the custom of the period for plebeians to send their daughters from six to sixteen to a scholastic establishment from about nine to five; and it is ten to one that Virginia was a pupil at one of these cheap nursery grounds, in which young ideas were planted out for the purpose of shooting.] The young lady, in all the playful innocence of sixteen, was in the habit of dancing and singing along the thoroughfare, when the smallness of her feet, and the beauty of her voice, struck the eye and ear of Appius. According to some authorities, Virginia was attended by a nurse-maid; but it is scarcely necessary to remark, that the same fatal fascination, which in military neighbourhoods attracts female attention from children that ought to be, to men that are, in arms, was no less powerful in the Via Sacra than in Rotten Row, – by the banks of the Tiber, than on the shores of the Serpentine. One morning, as Virginia was passing through the market-place, on her way to the seminary, with her tablets and school-bag – or more familiarly speaking, her slate and satchel – on her arm, a minion, under the dominion of Appius, seized an opportunity for seizing the maiden by the wrist. The nurse was either absent, or more probably talking to one of the officers on duty round the corner; for the fasces were as irresistible to the female servants of the day, as the honied words and oilskin capes of a similar class of officials at a much later period. Virginia screamed for assistance, and they only who have heard the cry of a female in distress, can imagine the shrillness of the shriek that rang through the market. Marcus – for such was the minion's name – was instantly surrounded by a circle of respectable tradesmen, who knew and desired to rescue Virginia. The smith, though he had other irons in the fire, left his bellows to deal Marcus a blow; the butcher, with uplifted cleaver, was preparing a most extensive chop; and the money-changer was just on the point of paying off the ruffian in a new kind of coin, when he declared Virginia to be his slave, and announced himself as the client of the dreaded Appius. At this formidable name, the smith's work seemed to be done, the butcher became a senseless block, and there was a sudden change in the note of the money-changer.