FOOTNOTES
[19] [It must be remembered, however, that formerly Rome had been a member of the Latin league; while the treaty of 493 was ratified by Rome on the one side and the Latin league on the other.]
[20] [In the time of the Punic Wars, however, we find the tribunes sometimes undertaking long journeys on public commissions.]
[21] [This idealised view is not held by all scholars.]
[22] [More probably, according to Herzog,[m] his bill never became a law; and, as no record was made of unpassed bills, we do not know the precise nature of his proposal. Possibly it aimed to give the peasants a better title to the lands they held.]
[23] [According to some authorities, he was hurled from the Tarpeian Rock; other ancient writers assert that his father put him to death.]
[24] [The comitia centuriata was now the great legislative body. At this early period the tribunes could influence legislation by moral suasion or by obstructing the levy of troops, disturbing public business, and threats of violence. The tribal assembly had as yet no legislative power. Cf. Herzog.[m]]
[25] [As long as the function of the tribunes was limited to the protection of the weak and to the obstruction of public business, an increase in number added strength; but when they acquired a right to initiate legislation, their great number weakened them, as the text makes clear.]
[26] [Recent researches convince Fiske[n] that Appius Claudius was a liberal, far-sighted statesman, neither brutal nor unnecessarily despotic; but it is hardly probable that anything can now dispel the traditional view. Unfavourable contemporary judgments are seldom reversed by posterity.]
[27] [Livy[h] makes Virginius say: “In this manner, my child, the only one in my power, do I secure your liberty.” Livy continues as follows: “Then looking back on Appius, ‘With this blood, Appius,’ said he, ‘I devote thee and thine head to perdition.’ Appius, alarmed by the cry raised at such a horrid deed, ordered Virginius to be seized. But he, clearing a passage with the weapon wherever he went, and protected also by a great number of young men who escorted him, made his way to the gate. Icilius and Numitorius raised up the lifeless body and exposed it to the view of the people, deploring the villainy of Appius, the fatal beauty of the maiden, and the necessity which had urged the father to the act. The matrons who followed joined their exclamations: ‘Are these the consequences of rearing children? Are these the rewards of chastity?’ with other mournful reflections, such as are suggested by grief to women, and which, from the greater sensibility of their tender minds, are always the most affecting. The discourse of the men, and particularly of Icilius, turned entirely on their being deprived of the protection of tribunes, and consequently of appeals to the people, and on the indignities thrown upon all.”]
[28] [The Twelve Tables were considered as the foundation of all law, and Cicero always mentions them with the utmost reverence. But only fragments remain, and those who have bestowed the greatest labour in examining these can give but an imperfect account of their original form and contents. A few provisions only can be noticed here.
(1) The patricians and their clients should be included in the plebeian tribes. And when we speak of clients, we must now comprehend also the freedmen (libertini), who were a large and increasing class. Further, the three old patrician tribes now, or before this, became obsolete; and henceforth a patrician was known not as a Ramnian, a Titian, or a Lucerian, but as a burgess of the Pollian, Papirian, or some other local tribe.
(2) The law of debt was left in its former state of severity. But the condition of borrowing money was made easier; for it was made illegal to exact higher interest than 10 per cent. For this is the meaning of fœnus unciarium. Uncia (derived from unus) is one of the twelve units into which the as was divided, each being one-twelfth part of the whole. Now ⅟₁₂ of the capital is 8⅓ per cent.; but as the old Roman year was only ten months, we must add two months’ interest at the same rate; and this amounts to 10 per cent. for the year of twelve months.
(3) No private law or privilegium—that is a law to impose any penalty or disability on a single citizen, similar in character to our bills of attainder—was to be made.
(4) There was to be an appeal to the people from the sentence of every magistrate; and no citizen was to be tried for his life except before the centuriate assembly.
(5) The old law or custom prohibiting all intermarriage (connubium) between the two orders was now formally confirmed, and thus a positive bar was put to any equalisation of the two orders. No such consummation could be looked for, when the code of national law proclaimed them to be of different races, unfit to mingle one with the other.
(6) To this may be added the celebrated law by which any one who wrote lampoons or libels on his neighbours was liable to be deprived of civil rights (diminutio capitis). By this law the poet Nævius was punished when he assailed the great family of the Metelli.[c]]
[29] [As a matter of fact, plebeians were represented in the office for but two or three years; it then fell exclusively into the hands of the patricians. Cf. Herzog.[m]]
[30] [“After these events,” says Eutropius,[f] “a census was held in the city, in which the number of the citizens was found to be 119,319.”]
[31] [That is, according to Plutarch.[i] Other authorities give Veturia as the name of his mother and Volumnia as that of his wife.]
[32] [Eutropius[f] writes him this dismal epitaph: “He was the next after Tarquin that acted as general against his country.”]
The Body of Virginia Carried through the Streets of Rome
