I believe that the real truth is something quite different. At that period when so many emigrants of the times of the Tarquins still existed, who flocked together wherever a new gathering point presented itself, I consider Coriolanus as one, who, on his retiring to the Volscians, formed such a centre. As he finds an army of Roman emigrants who are joined by the Volscians, he makes his appearance with them on the Roman frontier. He could not, however, have had any idea of forcing the walls of the city; but he encamped, just like a man in the history of Dittmarsch who had renounced his country, and he threatened war against it. He grants a respite, at first of thirty days, that the senate might deliberate whether his demands were to be conceded or no; and when this was not done, he waited for three days more, this being the time which the state or the general asking for satisfaction, still took to consider, whether war was to be declared, or how to decide on any proposals which might have been made. Coriolanus had come with partisans of the Tarquins, and likewise with many who had fled the country for their crimes, and lastly with Volscians. The republic invited him to return; the supplications of the mother, the wife, and the matrons could have had no other meaning—but to urge him at least to come alone, and not to bring back the terrible band. He probably answered, that he could not enter alone, that he could not leave his companions. If he returned, nothing remained for him but to be a tyrant in his own native land, as we know from Greek history that the return of the φυγάδες is an awful calamity; the ousted party cannot but crush the other entirely. We see him here as a noble-hearted man, who will not thus return, but rather dismisses his followers upon whom he must have made an impression by his having renounced his country; such a paramount influence could easily be exercised by a great man in times like those. He did not compromise the interests of the Volscians: it is possible that he really mediated for them, and obtained the cession of Antium and isopolity. Thus he fulfilled his duty towards those who had received him, and for Rome he gained the immense advantage that it was now reconciled with its most dangerous enemy; for, the Volscians had pressed upon Rome the hardest, and henceforth there remained only the Æquians, whom it was easy to resist. The childish vanity of the Romans has thrown so thick a veil upon this Volscian peace, but for which every thing would be unconnected. It saved Rome, and gave it new strength; and the state, with great wisdom, now turned this time to account.

It is one of the distinguishing features of Roman history, that many an event which seemed necessarily to lead to ruin, only brought out a new career of prosperity. After the plague, one might have expected the fall of Rome; and the peace with the Volscians was in the eyes of the later Romans, who for this very reason tried to conceal it, in some measure a humiliation; yet we have seen, how wise and fortunate it was. From it there arose a source of power for Rome, which, even in the most successful issue of the war, it would have been far from ever possessing. The dissolution of the Latin state destroyed de facto the equality which was established in the league. The general opinion in Dionysius, and also in Livy, is this, that the Latins were subjects of the Romans, and that the war under Manlius and Decius in the year 410 (415), was a kind of rebellion. This is contradicted by the notice of Cincius in Festus, according to which,—in his opinion, since Tullus Hostilius—the Latins had their separate republic, and the supremacy alternately with Rome. The true account is as follows: In the times from Servius Tullius down to Tarquin the Proud, the Latins were on a footing of equality with Rome; under Tarquin, they were subjects. This state of submission was done away with by the defection of Latium after the expulsion of the kings; after the battle at the Regillus, it was perhaps restored for a couple of years; and at last, equality was again established in the league of Sp. Cassius. In point of fact, it continued for thirty years; but when the Latin towns were partly occupied, partly destroyed by the Volscians, scarcely the fourth part of the Latin league was left, and this could no more put forth the same claims to equality as the whole state had done. It is evident, that in the beginning of the fourth century, no ties of home policy bind the Latin towns together any more. They have hardly a common tribunal still: some towns, Ardea for instance, were entirely severed from the rest. And thus the Latins are once more subjected to the Roman sovereignty, as they were under Tarquin the Proud. The distinction between the different times is the only clue to this labyrinth. Of the Hernicans I cannot assert this with positive certainty; yet it seems to me very likely. After the burning of the city by the Gauls, the Latins again broke loose from the Roman sway, and renewed their claims to equality; and, in consequence, there arose a war of thirty-two, or according to the more probable chronology, of twenty-eight years, which ended in a peace by which the old league of Sp. Cassius was re-established. In the meanwhile, the Volscian war had for Rome this advantage, that it stood alone indeed, but unmolested.

In Rome there was still at that time a considerable degree of fermentation. According to Dio Cassius, it was by no means seldom that distinguished plebeians were made away with by assassination. During these dissensions, the agrarian law, and that on the νομοθέται, are brought forward at every turn. It cannot be made out what interest the Plebes had in the increase of the number of tribunes to ten, two for each class: their authority could not have been raised by this means.

A strange story, which is, however, enveloped in great obscurity, belongs to this time of the increase of the tribunes. It is stated in Valerius Maximus, that a tribune, P. Mucius, had caused his nine colleagues to be burnt alive as traitors, because, headed by Sp. Cassius, they had hindered the election of the magistrates. There is here an evident confusion of dates, as ten tribunes were first elected in 297, twenty-eight years after the consulship of Sp. Cassius. Two hypotheses may be set up to account for this. Either these tribunes were traitors to the Plebes, which is not likely, as the election lay with the tribes; or P. Mucius was not a tribune of the people; or at least he did not pronounce the sentence, but it was the curies which did so, and they must have condemned the tribunes as breakers of the peace. There must be something in this story, as Zonaras (from Dio) likewise mentions it; perhaps this event is identical with the impeachment of nine tribunes in Livy, about the time of the Canuleian quarrels.

LEGISLATION OF THE TWELVE TABLES.

We pass over the unimportant wars with the Æquians and Sabines, and over some laws which indeed are of the greatest moment for the study of antiquity. If we could review in detail the debates on the Lex Terentilia concerning the equalization of the two orders, it would be very interesting; but this is impossible, and we can only dwell on quite detached notices. One of them is this, that a trireme was sent out from Rome with three envoys to collect the Greek laws, particularly those of Athens. The credibility of this story has been much discussed. I now retract the opinion which I expressed in the first edition of my Roman History. I had considered as little as my predecessors, that the questions whether the Roman laws have sprung from the Attic ones, or whether envoys went from Rome to Athens, are quite distinct. If the question be put in this way,—“Are the Roman laws borrowed from those of the Athenians?” the answer is a decided “No.” Two laws of Solon only are quoted in support of it, which are said to be met with in the Pandects; yet these are not only quite insignificant, but they are also such as might just as well be borrowed from other codes: we may find as many detached Germanic laws, which coincide with the Roman ones. Nor can we know how far the common descent from the Pelasgian stock may have produced a similarity of laws. All that is distinctive in the Roman law, is not to be found in the Athenian; and distinctive it is with regard to the rights of persons and things. Never had the Greeks the right of paternal authority like the Romans; never the law, that the wife by her marriage entered into the relation of a daughter and co-heiress; never the jus mancipii, the formality in the purchase. The difference between property by formal purchase and simple property, between property and hereditary possession, does not exist in the Attic law: the Roman law of inheritance, the Roman law of debt; the Roman system in contracts of borrowing and lending, are quite foreign to the Athenians; the Roman method of procedure is thoroughly different from the Attic. The Attic law belongs to a much later time, when the forms were already very polished; and we behold in Athens a social body which is deficient in the very features which distinguish the Romans. And what we also know of the laws of the other Greek nations has nothing to do with the Romans. If the laws of the states in Magna Græcia should chance to bear any resemblance to those of Rome, this is certainly much rather owing to their having sprung from the same Italian source. Thus in the tabula Heracleensis, the law of the ager limitatus seems to have been similar to that which was in force at Rome.

For this reason, therefore, the story has been deemed untrue; yet for all this, the real facts may have been quite different. Every one has often in his life done things after long consideration which have never attained their object: the same may happen to a state. The embassy falls just within the time of Pericles, between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, the period when Athens was most flourishing, and the fame of that most powerful and enlightened city was certainly spread far and wide. That the senate at a much later age, in the days of Cassander, when wishing to set up a bust of the wisest Greek, did not make choice of Socrates but Pythagoras, was quite in the spirit of the Italian nation; yet that they selected Alcibiades as the bravest, proves how familiar Athens was to the minds of the Romans. They may therefore indeed have sent this embassy not wholly without purpose, as they seem to have derived advantage from it for their political constitution.

There is yet this other tradition concerning this legislation, that a wise Ephesian named Hermodorus, who was staying at Rome, had been consulted about it by the decemvirs. He is said to have been a friend of the great Heraclitus, and to have been banished from Ephesus because he was too wise (ἡμέων μηδεὶς ὀνήϊστος ἔστω). Down to a late period, there was shown at Rome a statua palliata which was referred to him. The tradition is old, and Hermodorus was not so renowned that the Romans should have called him their teacher without good reasons. He could play the part of adviser, as the object of the legislation was laid down, which was to do away with the difference between the two orders, and so far to modify the constitution, that both of these might as much as possible constitute one whole; then also to effect a limitation of the imperium of the consuls. For all this the civil code has no Greek sources whatever. There are points in the Roman law, of which we know for certain that Solon had already abolished them; and in the criminal code there are still greater discrepancies.

The plan from the very first, was to appoint a mixed commission for making laws. In Livy it looks as if the plebeians had entertained the preposterous idea of appointing the lawgivers exclusively from their own order, five in number; but Dionysius has the number ten, evidently therefore there were to be five patricians, and five plebeians. Very strange again is the statement of Livy that the plebeians had earnestly requested, that, if it was once intended to have a revision of the laws, and the patricians did not wish the plebeians to have a share in it, these would begin alone, and come to an agreement with them with regard to the fundamental principles only. People were therefore sensible enough to see, that a mixed commission would only breed the most bitter quarrels among its members; and that on that account all had better be chosen from one order, when the main points were once settled. Nevertheless it is remarkable that all the writers agree in asserting that the obnoxious laws, the ones which were hostile to the liberty of the plebeians, were on the two last tables, which derived their origin from the second set of decemvirs. The ten first are not attacked; they merely granted isonomy, which had already been agreed upon, as Appius in Livy says, se omnia jura summis infimisque æquasse. The quite different rights of patricians and plebeians were made equals; so that with regard to the patricians also, personal arrest, and personal bail could take place.

Undoubtedly, the ten first decemvirs were all patricians from old families; decemviri consulari potestate legibus scribundis, was their name according to the consular Fasti which have been recently discovered. They were appointed in the place of the consuls, the city præfect, and the quæstors. But, are Livy and Dionysius correct in stating that the tribunate also was abolished? It is not to be believed. It would have been madness, if the plebeians had thus given themselves up with their hands fettered. At the second decemvirate only, we find them appellationi invicem cedentes: we then meet with C. Julius, who brings a criminal cause before the people. The tribunes must have said, we are willing that there shall be ten patrician lawgivers, but the continuance of the leges sacratæ is to us the guarantee of our rights; for the leges sacratæ referred to the tribunate. The mistake may easily be accounted for; it arose, because such was the case under the second tribunate. On this supposition, that the tribunate was not abolished during the first decemvirate, and that a general law of the land was the object aimed at, every thing is clear. All the points about which there might be dispute, were reserved.