(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