3 XV. seemingly trustworthy: he and his colleagues had CHAP. used their power moderately, and had done their duty as lawgivers impartially; and such men were more to be trusted than the well-known supporters of the old ascendancy of the burghers. Appius availed himself of this feeling, and exerted himself strenuously to procure his re-election. But his colleagues now becoming jealous of him, contrived 3 that he should himself preside at the comitia for the election of the new decemvirs; it being considered one of the duties of the officer who presided at, or, in Roman language, who held the comitia, to prevent the re-election of the same man to the same office two successive years, by refusing to receive votes in his favour if offered: and most of all would he be expected to prevent it, when the man to be re-elected was himself. But the people might remember, that within the last few years they had owed to the repeated re-election of the same tribunes some of their greatest privileges; and that then as now the patricians had earnestly endeavoured to prevent it. They therefore elected Appius Claudius to the decemvirate for the second time, and passing over all his former colleagues, and all the high aristocratical candidates, they elected with him four patricians, and, as Niebuhr thinks, five plebeians. The patricians were M. Cornelius Maluginensis, whose brother had been consul nine years before; M. Sergius, of whom nothing is known; L. 4 3 Livy, III. 35. 4 Livy, III. 35. Dionysius, X. 58. XV. CHAP. Minucius, who had been consul in the year 296, and Q. Fabius Vibulanus, who had been already thrice consul, in 287, 289, and 295. Kaso Duilius, Sp. Oppius Cornicen, and Q. Potelius, are expressly said by Dionysius to have been plebeians; and we know of none but plebeian families of the first and last of these names, nor, with one single exception, of the second. The remaining two decemvirs were T. Antonius Merenda and M. Rabuleius, and these we should judge from their names to have been plebeians also; but Dionysius distinguishes them from the three preceding them, and classes them with three of the patrician decemvirs, merely as men of no great personal distinction. Their ty ranny. Experience has shown that even popular leaders when entrusted with absolute power have often abused it to the purposes of their own tyranny, yet these have commonly remained so far true to their old principles as zealously to abate the mischiefs of aristocracy; and thus they have done scarcely less good in destroying what was evil, than evil in withholding what was good. But to give absolute power to an aristocratical leader is an evil altogether un A vestal virgin of the name of Oppia is mentioned in the annals of the year 271, (Livy, II. 42,) and she must have been a patrician. Nor is it improbable that there was, in the times of the decemviri, a patrician as well as a plebeian family of Duilii, just as there were patrician and plebeian Sicinii. And the same may be said of the Pœtelii, Antonii, and Rabuleii; and the patrician branches of these families may have become extinct long before the time when their names became famous in history. Livy seems to have regarded the decemviri as all patricians; and if their names had presented a manifest proof of the contrary, he surely must have been aware of it, the more so as the plebeian Duilius acts an important part in his narrative of this very period. XV. mixed. An aristocracy is so essentially the strongest CHAP. part of society, that a despot is always tempted to court its favour; and if he is bound to it by old connexions, and has always fought in its cause, this tendency becomes irresistible. So it was with Appius: the instant that he had secured his election, he reconciled himself with his old party, and laboured to convince the patricians, that not their own favourite candidates, the Quinctii, or his own kinsman, C. Claudius, could have served their cause more effectually than himself. Accordingly the decemvirate rested entirely on the support of the patricians. The associations or clubs', Kæso's old accomplices, were the tools and sharers of the tyranny: even the better patricians forgave the excesses of their party for joy at its restored ascendancy; the consulship, instead of being controlled, as the commons had fondly hoped, by fresh restraints, was released even from those which had formerly held it; instead of two consuls, there were now ten, and these no longer shackled by the Valerian law, nor kept in check by the tribuneship, but absolute with more than the old kingly sovereignty. Now indeed, said the patricians, the expulsion of the Tarquins was a real gain; hitherto it had been purchased by some painful con 6 Livy, III. 36. Aliquandiu æquatus inter omnes terror fuit; paullatim totus vertere in plebem cœpit. Abstinebatur a patribus, in humiliores libidinose crudeliterque consulebatur. 7 Patriciis juvenibus sepserant latera, eorum catervæ tribunalia obsederant. Livy, III. 37. 'Era 8 ρείαν ἕκαστοι συνῆγον, ἐπιλεγόμενοι Primores Patrum-nec pro- XV. CHAP. descensions to the plebeians, and the growing importance of those half aliens had impaired the majesty of what was truly Rome. But this was at an end; and by a just judgment upon their insolence, the very revolution which they had desired was become their chastisement; and the decemvirate, which had been designed to level all the rights of the patricians, was become the instrument of restoring to them their lawful ascendancy. They add two tables the code of tables. The decemvirate seems indeed to have exhibited to complete the perfect model of an aristocratical royalty, vested the twelve not in one person, but in several; held not for life, but for a single year, and therefore not confined to one single family of the aristocracy, but fairly shared by the whole order. Towards the commons, however, the decemvirs were in all respects ten kings. Each was attended by his twelve lictors, who carried not the rods only, but the axe 10, the well-known symbol of sovereignty. The colleges of ordinary magistrates were restrained by the general maxim of Roman law, "melior est conditio prohibentis," which gave to each member of the college a negative upon the act of his colleagues. But the decemvirs bound themselves by oath" each to respect his colleagues' majesty; what one decemvir did, none of the rest might do. Then followed all the ordinary outrages of the ancient 9 Decem regum species erat. Livy, III. 36. 10 Cum fascibus secures illigatas præferebant. Livy, III. 36. 11 Intercessionem consensu sustulerant, is Livy's expression, III. 36. Dionysius adds, öpкia тeμóv τες ἀπόῤῥητα τῷ πλήθει, Χ. 59. These oaths resembled those which were sometimes taken by the ruling members of the Greek oligarchies: Kaì To dŋμg KAKÓVOUS ἔσομαι, καὶ βουλεύσω ὅ τι ἂν ἔχω Kakóv. Aristotle, Politica, V. 9. XV. aristocracies and tyrannies; insult, oppression, plun- CHAP. der, blood; and, worst of all, the licence of the patrician youth was let loose without restraint upon the wives and daughters of the plebeians". Meanwhile the legislation of the decemvirs was to complete the triumph of their party. The two tables which they added to the former ten are described by Cicero as containing "unequal laws;" the prohibition of marriages between the patricians and plebeians is expressly said to have been amongst the number. Not that we can suppose that such marriages had been hitherto legal, that is to say, they were not connubia and therefore if a patrician, as I have said, married the daughter of a plebeian, his children became plebeians. Still they were common in fact; and as the object of the first appointment of the decemvirs was in part to unite the two orders into one people, so it was expected that they would henceforth be made legal. It was therefore like the loss of an actual right, when the decemvirs, instead of legalizing these marriages, enacted a positive law to denounce them, as if they intended for the future actually to prohibit them altogether. solve to re power after the year. So passed the second year of the decemvirate. They reBut as it drew near to its close, the decemvirs tain their showed no purpose of resigning their offices, or of the end of appointing successors. Whether it was really a usurpation, or whether they had been elected for more than a single year 13, may be doubtful; but it is con12 Dionysius, XI. 2. tain that the decemvirs were ap13 Niebuhr considers it as cer- pointed for a longer period than |