XIII. early history became more and more romantic, would CHAP. omit whatever seemed inconsistent with the supposed purity and nobleness of the times of their forefathers; and acts of bloody vengeance, which the actors themselves, and their immediate descendants, regarded with pride rather than compunction, as Sulla gloried in his proscriptions and recorded them on his monument, were carefully suppressed by historians of a later age. The burghers of the third and fourth centuries thought it no dishonour that their own daggers 34, or those of their faithful clients, should have punished with death the insolence and turbulence of the most obstinate of the commons; they would glory in breaking up the assemblies of their adversaries by main force, and in treating them on other occasions with all possible scorn and contumely; ejecting them from their houses 35 with a strong hand; insulting them and their families in their nightly revels, or in open day; abusing them in the streets, or besetting their doors 36 with armed slaves and carrying off their wives and daughters 37. 34 Zonaras, VII. 17, who, as we now find, borrowed his statement from Dion Cassius. Dion's words are, οἱ εὐπατρίδαι φανερῶς μὲν οὐ πάνυ, πλὴν βραχέων, ἐπιθειάζοντές τινα, ἀντέπραττον, λάθρα δὲ συχνούς τῶν θρασυτάτων ἐφόνευον. Fragm. Vatic. XXII. 35 This is implied in the "forcible occupation" noticed in the law," de Aventino publicando." 36 Such outrages must be alluded to in the speech ascribed to L. Quinctius, Livy, III. 19. “Si quis ex plebe domum suam ob VOL. I. sessam a familiâ armatâ nunciaret, 37 The famous story of Virginia R XIII. CHAP. Their own houses, built mostly on the hills of Rome, which were so many separate fortresses, and always by their style of building secure at once from public notice and from attack, favoured the perpetration of all acts of violence. Others besides insolvent debtors might be shut up in their dungeons; and if hatred or fear prompted them to consign their victims to a yet surer keeping, the dungeon might readily become a grave 58, and who would dare to search for those whom it contained, whether alive or dead? Obscure story about of nine men 38 One act in particular, in which its authors doubtthe burning less gloried as in a signal example of public justice, as traitors. has been so concealed by the later annalists, that from the faint and confused notices of it which alone remain to us, we can neither discover its date, nor its cause, nor any of its particulars. We only know that at some time or other during the latter half of the third century of Rome, nine eminent men an outrage could be ventured 38 The body of a murdered man 39 Εννέα ποτὲ δήμαρχοι πυρὶ ὑπὸ Tоû dýμov édóéηoav. Dion Cassius, Frag. Vatic. XXII and copied by Zonaras, VII. 17. A confused vestige of the same story may be found in Valerius Maximus (VI. 39 3. 2); and the mutilated passage in Festus, beginning in the common editions with "Nauti consulatu," must clearly refer to it. Niebuhr's restoration and explanation of this last fragment may be found in his note 265 to the 2nd volume of his History, p. 144, 2nd edition. Both are highly ingenious, and that the fragment began with the word "novem," and not with "nauti," seems certain; inasmuch as the article before it begins with the word “ novalis,” and that which follows it begins with "novendiales." All the words now to be found in the MS. of Festus, half of the page having been accidentally destroyed by who advocated the cause of the commons were burned alive in the circus, such being the old punishment of the worst traitors. It appears, however, from the fragment of Festus, which undoubt fire, are the following, and ranged in the following order as to lines : T. Sicini Volsci Who can profess to fill up such a fragment with certainty? But I observe that Mutius Scævola belonged to a house which, so far as we know, was never patrician: and the preceding name of which only the first syllable remains, Ver-, may also have denoted a plebeian, as we meet with a Virginius amongst the tribunes as early as the year 293. (Livy, III. 11.) But as all the others are patrician names, how can they have been tribunes; or how can there have been nine tribunes earlier than the year 297; or how can we find a place for such an event between 297 and the appointment of the decemviri; after which time it becomes wholly inconceivable? The words "adversarii" and "adversus eum seem to me the most unlikely parts of Niebuhr's conjectural addition. The criminals would hardly have been described simply as the adversaries of T. Sicinius, nor their crime called a conspiracy against him. The story in Valerius Maximus represents one tribune as being a principal agent in the execution of his nine colleagues. We can thus explain the position of the name of Sicinius, if we read, "novem collegæ T. Sicinii Volsci," and "cum conjurationem" (or 66 consilia") "inissent adversus Remp." But what are we to call the office in which these ten men were colleagues together? Can it really have been the tribuneship? and are we to take Cicero's statement, in the fragments of his speech for Cornelius, that the number of tribunes was increased from two to ten in the very year after the first institution of the office? and is it possible that the patricians named in Festus' Fragment were the very persons whom Dion Cassius had in his mind, when he said that "many of the highest patricians renounced their nobility from being ambitious of the great power of the office, and became tribunes?" If this were so, T. Sicinius Volscus would be a member of the house of the plebeian Sicinii, and not the patrician who was consul in the year 267. The time of the execution I should place about the same time as the death of Cassius; and it is not incredible that even the people in their centuries may have believed that accusation of a conspiracy against the common liberty which was brought against Cassius, and may have sentenced nine of the tribunes to death as his accomplices, especially if one CHAP. XIII. XIII. CHAP. edly relates to this event, that some of the victims in this execution were of patrician houses; and there is an obscure and corrupt passage of Dion Cassius in the Vatican fragments, which seems to indicate that some of the burghers did take part with the commons, whether from a sense of justice or from personal ambition. A.U.C. 298. A.C. 454. Law of L. Icilius for allotting out the Aventine to the com mons. The year 298, to return to our annals, was marked on the part of the tribunes by an important measure. First of all, to prevent their increased number from being a source of weakness, by making differences amongst themselves more likely, they bound themselves to each other by solemn oaths, that no tribune should oppose the decisions of the majority of his colleagues, nor act without their consent. Then Lucius Icilius, one of their number, brought forward his famous law for allotting the whole of the Aventine hill to the commons for ever, to be their exclusive quarter and stronghold. This hill was not, as we have seen, a part of the original city, nor was of their own colleagues, and a maining accounts are full of variations. Sempronius Atratinus is mentioned by Dionysius as speaking in favour of the appointment of a commission of ten men to carry into effect the proposed agrarian law of Cassius, at least in a modified form; this was in the year 268. (Dionysius, VIII. 74.) I have sometimes thought whether the nine men may not have been members of this commission, and accused by their tenth colleague, T. Sicinius, the patrician, of abusing their powers to favour the tyranny of Cassius. 40 Dionysius, X. 31. it even yet included within the pomærium, or religious boundary, although it was now within the walls; much of it was public or demesne land, having neither been divided out among the original citizens, the burghers, nor having in later times been assigned in portions to any of the commons. The ground, which was thus still public, was occupied according to custom by individual burghers; some had built on it, but parts of it were still in their natural state and overgrown with wood. Yet this hill was the principal quarter in which the commons lived, and large parts of it had doubtless been assigned to them in the time of the kings, as the freeholds of those to whom they were granted. It appears that encroachments were made on these freeholds by the burghers; that the landmarks, which, according to Roman usage, always distinguished private property from common, were from time to time forcibly or fraudulently removed; the ground was then claimed as public, and as such occupied only by burghers; and in this way the ejectment of the commons, from what they considered as their own hill, seemed likely to be accomplished. Again, the Aventine is one of the steepest and strongest of the hills of Rome; if wholly in the hands of the commons, it would give them a stronghold of their own, such as the burghers enjoyed in the other hills; and this, in such stormy times, when the dissensions between the orders might at any instant break out into open war, was a consideration of the highest importance. Such were the reasons which induced the tribunes to suspend CHAP. XIII. |