SECTION XXXVIII.

THE HISTORY OF ROME.

The Decemvirate.

1. THE Romans had, till this period, no body of civil laws. Under the regal government, the kings alone administrated justice: the consuls succeeded them in this high prerogative; and thus possessed without control the absolute command of the fortunes and civil rights of all the citizens. To remedy this great defect, Caius Terentilius Harsa, a tribune, proposed the nomination of ten commissioners (five by the burghers, and five by the commons), to frame and digest a code of laws for the explanation and security of the rights of all orders of the state. A measure so equitable ought to have met with no opposition. It was, however, strenuously though ineffectually opposed by the patricians, who, by a fruitless contest, only exposed their own weakness. After contending for ten years, the commons corceded that ten commissioners, or decemviri, should be chosen; but the election being made in the Comitia by centuries from the patricians, who, by means of their numerous clients, were able to elect whom they pleased; the consul Appius Claudius (who had violently opposed the Volerian law), and his colleague Titus Genucius, were at the head of this important commission, and the other eight were also senators and consular persons, 450 B. C. The laws were framed-those celebrated statutes known by the name of the Twelve Tables, which are the basis of the great structure of the Roman jurisprudence.

2. An acquaintance with these ancient laws is therefore of importance. Even in the most flourishing times of the republic they continued to be of the highest authority. They have the encomium of Cicero himself; and we learn from him, that to commit these laws to memory was an essential part of a liberal education. From the twelve tables the juris-consulti composed a system of judicial forms for the regulation of the different tribunals. The number of the laws was likewise from time to time increased by the Senatus-consulta and Plebiscita; the first enacted by the sole authority of the senate; and the latter by the people, without the consent of the senate.

3. The decemvirs were invested with all the powers of government, for the consulate and all other authority but their own had ceased on their creation. Each decemvir by turn presided for a day, and had the sovereign authority, with its insignia, the fasces. The nine others officiated solely as judges in the determination of law-suits, and the correction of abuses. An abuse, however, of the most flagrant nature, committed by the chief of their own number, was destined speedily to bring their office to its termination.

4. Appius Claudius, inflamed by lawless passion for the young Virginia, the betrothed spouse of Icilius, formerly a tribune of the people, employed a profligate dependant to claim the maiden as his own property, on the false pretence of her being the daughter of one of his female slaves. The claim was made to the decemvir himself in judgment, who pronounced an infamous decree, which tore from her family this helpless victim, and put her into the hands of his own minion. Her father Virginius, to save the honour of his child, plunged a dagger into her breast; and turning to Appius, he cried, "On thee, and on thy head be the curse of this blood." Virginius then hastened to the army encamped at Tusculum, which declared against the decemviri, and began their march to Rome. The people, who had witnessed this shocking scene, would have massacred Appius on the spot, had he not found means to escape amidst the tumult. Their vengeance, however, was satisfied by the instant abolition of this hated magistracy, and by the death of Appius, who chose by his own hand to prevent the stroke of the executioner. His colleague Oppius, the chief abettor of his crimes, died in the same manner, and the rest went into voluntary exile, while their goods were forfeited to the public use. The decemvirate had subsisted for three years. The consuls were now restored, together with the tribunes, which re-instated the people at once in all their irghts and privileges (448 B. C. and 305th year of Rome).

SECTION XXXIX.

THE HISTORY OF ROME.

Increase of the Popular Power.

1. THE scale of the people was daily acquiring weight, at the expense of that of the patrician order. [The old laws for the security of personal liberty were confirmed afresh, and received a stronger sanction; and the new law proposed by the consul Valerius acknowledged the commons of Rome to be the Roman people, and that a Plebiscitum or decree of the commons should be equally binding on the whole people, after being confirmed by the senate, as the decrees of the comitia of centuries. These were followed by the Horatian and Duilian laws, which put an end to all exclusive magistracies, whether plebeian or patrician, which were to be equally divided between both (447 B.C.). Thus the two orders were to be made equal to one another, but at the same time to be kept perpetually distinct, for one of the laws of the twelve tables, which had received the solemn sanction of the people, declared the marriage of a patrician with a plebeian to be unlawful. These concessions were made by the patricians, as others had been before, to be an

nulled on the first opportunity. They succeeded in preventing the new laws from being acted upon, even in the first year. Accordingly all things returned to their old state; except that the two orders were rendered more distinct than ever, by the positive law enacted by the decemviri, and introduced into the twelve tables, by which intermarriages between them were strictly forbidden. It was impossible that matters should so rest. The patricians attempted to follow up their success, which irritated the commons, and led to tumults. The commons again resorted to arms; when the Canuleian law, which repealed the prohibition of intermarriages between the two orders, was carried without further opposition, 445;] and this concession had its usual effect of stimulating the people to inflexible perseverance in their struggle to bring into operation the Horatian and Duilian laws. On an emergence of war, the customary device was practised, of refusing to enter the rolls, unless upon the immediate enactment of a law, which should admit their capacity of holding all the offices of the republic. The senate sought a palliative, by the creation of six military tribunes in lieu of the consuls, three of whom should be patricians, and three plebeians (442). This measure satisfied the people for a time: the consuls, however, were restored within a few months.

2. The disorders of the republic, and frequent wars, had interrupted the regular survey or census of the citizens for a great many years. This was remedied by the creation of a new magistracy. Two officers, under the title of Censors, were appointed for five years (441 B. C. and 312th year of Rome), whose duty was not only to make the census every five years, but to inspect the morals and regulate the duties of all the citizens during their period of office: in virtue of this power, they kept in dependence both the senate and people. (Nine years after the institution of the censorship, the dictator Mamercus proposed and carried a law to limit the authority of the censors to eighteen months; and as they continued to be elected only at intervals of five years, this magistracy was always in abeyance for the last three years and a-half).* The censorship, from these extensive powers, was accounted the most honourable office of the commonwealth, and was exercised, in the latter times of the republic,

*The original duty of the censor was to take a register of the population and of their property. They divided it according to its civil distinctions, and drew up a list of the senators, of the equites, of the members of the several tribes, or of those who enjoyed the right of voting, and a list of the ærarians, consisting of those freedmen, naturalized strangers and others, who being enrolled in no tribe, possessed no vote in the comitia, but still enjoyed all the rights of Roman citizens; for the private rights of Roman citizens could not be taken away by any magistrate, unless convicted of crime. The authority of the censor only extended to such privileges as were strictly political. He could degrade any man from his rank for improper conduct in public or domestic life. He fixed the value of the property of individuals, which valuation was assessed to the property-tax. He had also the entire manage ment of the regular revenues of the state, as the letting of the state demesnes, which included arable land, vineyards, pastures, forests, mines, harbours, fisheries, buildings, &c.

only by consular persons, and afterwards annexed to the supreme function of the emperors.

3. The dissensions between the orders continued with little variation either in their causes or effects. The people generally, as the last resource, refused to enrol themselves as soldiers, till overawed by the supreme authority of a dictator. To obviate the frequent necessity of this measure, which enforced at best an unwilling and compelled obedience, the senate had recourse to a wise expedient: this was to give a regular pay to the troops. To defray this expense, a moderate tax was imposed, in proportion to the fortunes of the citizens. From this period the Roman system of war assumed a new aspect. The senate always found soldiers at command; the army was under its control; the enterprises of the republic were more extensive, and its successes more signal and important. Veii, the proud rival of Rome, and its equal in extent and population, was taken by the dictator Camillus, after a siege of ten years; (year of Rome 359, and 394 B. C.) [After the fall of Veii, the patricians, considering themselves no longer obliged to conciliate the commons, recovered their old exclusive possession of the highest offices. Yet this period was by no means one of hopeless submission on the part of the commons. They demanded grants of land in the territory of Veii, which was conceded on a scale of unusual liberality. The lots consisted of seven jugera (equal to 4 acres); and not only fathers of families were considered in this grant, but they received in addition a like allotment for each free person in their household. Camillus was impeached by the tribunes for having appropriated secretly to his own use a portion of the plunder of Veii, when he withdrew from Rome, and incurred the forfeiture of all his civil rights.] The art of war was improved, as it now became a profession, instead of an occasional occupation. The Romans were, from this circumstance, an overmatch for all their neighbours. Their dominion, hitherto confined to the territory of a few miles, was now rapidly extended. It was impossible but the detached states of Italy must have given way before a people always in arms, and who, by a perseverance alike resolute and judicious, were equal to every attempt in which they engaged.

4. The taking of Veii was succeeded by a war with the Gauls. This formidable people, a branch of the great nation of the Celta, had opened to themselves a passage through the Alps at four different periods, and had been at this time established in the country between those mountains and the Apenines for about 200 years. Under the command of Brennus, they laid siege to the Etruscan Clusium; and this people, of no warlike turn themselves, solicited the aid of the Romans. The circumstances recorded of this war with the Gauls throw over it a cloud of fable and romance. The formidable power of Rome is said to have been in a single campaign so utterly exhausted, that the Gauls

entered the city without resistance, and burned it to the ground, the capitol excepted, 390 B. C.-[The capitol was blockaded for six or eight months, when it was saved by the payment of 1000 pounds' weight of gold. Even in accepting these terms, the Gaulish leader felt that he was admitting to mercy enemies whom he had wholly in his power. The story of the total destruction of the Gauls on their return home through Italy, is now believed to be one of those fabrications invented to lessen the humiliation of the Romans.] To the burning of the city by the Gauls, the Roman writers attribute the loss of all the records and monuments of their early history.

5. It is singular, that most of the Roman revolutions should have owed their origin to women. From this cause we have seen spring the abolition of the regal office and the decemvirate. From this cause arose the change of the constitution, by which the plebeians became capable of holding the highest offices of the commonwealth. The younger daughter of Fabius Ambustus, married to a plebeian, envious of the honours of her elder sister, the wife of a patrician, stimulated her father to rouse the commons to a resolute purpose of asserting their equal right with the patricians to all the offices and dignities of the state. After much turbulence and contest, the final issue was the admission of the plebeians, first to the consulate, and afterwards to the censorship, the prætorship, and priesthood (A. U. C. 454, and B. C. 300);-a change beneficial in the main, as consolidating the strength of the republic, and cutting off the principal source of intestine disorder. The factions of the state had hitherto confined the

growth of its power, its splendour, and prosperity; for no state can at once be prosperous and anarchical. We shall now mark the rapid elevation of the Roman name and empire.

SECTION XL.

CONQUEST OF ITALY BY THE ROMANS.

1. THE war with the Samnites* now began (343), and continued, with but short intermissions, till 290; but its successful termination was speedily followed by the reduction of all the states of

The Samnites inhabited the mountainous country, now called the Matese, nearly due north of Naples. On more than three-fourths of its circumference, it is bounded by the Vulturno and its tributary streams, the Calore and the Tamaro, which send their waters into the Lower or Tyrrhenean Sea; but on its northern side, its springs and torrents run down into the Biferno, and so make their way to the Adriatic. The circumference of the Matese, as above described, is between seventy and eighty miles.

The Samnites made a noble resistance. During the second war, two consular armies were obliged to surrender in the pass of Caudium, now called the valley of Arpaia, through which the modern road from Naples to Benevento runs. The conditions granted by Pontius, the Samnite general, were, that the towns and the territory taken by the Romans should be restored, and that their colonists settled