left enough undone to afford a pretext for the prolongation of their
powers. It was suggested that though the ten tables were very good as
far as they went, there was room for two more; and to give an
opportunity for this small sum in addition being completed, the
continuance of the decemviral form of government was agreed upon. As the
time for the election approached, the most disgraceful election
intrigues were practised, and in order to disqualify Appius
Claudius--one of the former Decemviri--the patricians put him in the
chair, or elected him president, on the day of the nomination of the
candidates. Appius had for some time been acting the character of the
"people's friend," and he had shown himself a consummate actor, for,
being a tyrant by nature, he must have been wholly indebted to art for
appearing otherwise. Having been called upon to preside, he opened the
business of the day by proposing nine names of little note--including
five plebeians--and then, with an air of frankness, he suggested himself
as a fit and proper person to complete the number. The people--surprised
and amused at the coolness of the proposition--proceeded to elect the
very candid candidate, who, being joined with a number of nonentities,
formed the unit to the ten of which the rest composed the cipher. Soon
after their election, the new Decemviri proceeded to complete the twelve
tables--and as they formed the origin of the Civil Law, embodying
principles which the best jurists have been unable to improve--we will
spread these tables before the student, and ask him to sit down with us
for a few moments over them.
We cannot promise him any other than a dry repast, with little or
nothing to whet his curiosity; and unless his appetite for information
is extremely vigorous, there will be little to suit his taste on those
plates of bronze or ivory--the material is immaterial, and has been
variously described--on which the provisions we are about to serve up
were originally carved.
The first table coincided in some respects with our County Courts Act,
and furnished a cheap mode of bringing a defendant into court by a
simple summons, though if he refused to walk, a mule, an appropriate
type of obstinacy, was to be provided for him.
By the second table, it was justifiable to kill a thief in the night;
but a person robbed in the day was to have the thief as his slave; a
privilege equal to that of being allowed to take into your service, as
your page, the urchin who has just picked your pocket. Such an exploit
would no doubt indicate a smart lad, and, in order to make him literally
smart, the Roman law, in the spirit of our Juvenile Offenders Act,
ordered the knave a whipping.
The third table was in some respects an interest table; for it
prohibited the taking of more than 12 per cent. on a loan; but if a
debtor did not pay within thirty days, he might be bound with chains; an
arrangement by which his exertions to get out of difficulty must have
been grievously fettered. Having been made to enter into these
unprofitable bonds for sixty days, the debtor, if his creditors were
more than one, might have been divided between them; but human nature
must have found it difficult, under such circumstances, to declare a
dividend.
The fourth table seems hardly to have a sound leg to stand upon; for it
gave a father the right of life and death over all his children,
together with the privilege of selling them. To prevent a parent from
pursuing a disgraceful traffic in a series of alarming sacrifices of his
family stock, he was not permitted to sell the same child more than
three times over, when the infant was permitted to go into the market on
his own account, free of all filial duty.
The fifth table related to the estates of deceased persons; and if a
freedman died without a will or a direct heir, the law provided for the
distribution of his goods without providing for his family. Fallacious
hopes among poor relations were checked by handing over to the patron
all that remained; and thus the client may be said to have been subject
to costs, even after the debt of nature had been satisfied.
In the sixth table, there is nothing worthy of remark; but the seventh
guards against damage done by quadrupeds, and not only meets the old
familiar case of the donkey among the chickens, but declares that any
one wilfully treading on a neighbour's corn shall pay a suitable
penalty.
Agriculture was protected by making it a capital offence to blast by
incantation another's wheat; so that had the farmers of the day moaned
over each other's ruined prospects as they have done in more recent
times, performing a sort of incantation by singing the same old song of
despair, they might have been liable to lose their heads in the literal
as well as in the intellectual sense of which the phrase is susceptible.
By the same table, a man breaking another's limb was exposed to
retaliation; and a simple fracture was compensated by a simple fracture,
though the parties were allowed to compound if they preferred doing so.
The eighth table was equivalent to a Building Act; and by providing a
space of two feet and a half between house and house, it prevented
collisions among neighbours; while the fruit dropping from one person's
tree into another's garden, fell by law into the hands of the latter.
The purity of justice was provided for by the ninth table, which ordered
the execution of a judge who accepted a bribe in the execution of his
office. It inflicted the same penalty on a corrupt arbitrator, or--that
greater traitor still--the wretch who should deliver up a Roman citizen
to the enemy.
The tenth table might teach a lesson to our own enlightened age, in
which it is too generally the custom to waste in hollow and costly
ceremonies over the dead, much that might be made serviceable to the
living. More than twenty centuries have passed since the Roman
law-makers, seeing how mourners might be caught by the undertakers in the
traps and trappings of woe, limited to a certain sum the costs of a
funeral. The outlay upon the "infernal deities," to whom sacrifices were
made in those days, and to whom, therefore, we may compare the black
job-masters of our own time, was also reduced to the very lowest figure.
In measures of health the Romans were equally in advance of us; for we
still accumulate our dead in the grave-yards of our towns, though by the
laws of the twelve tables, burials within the city were prohibited.
The eleventh and twelfth tables have come down to us in such mere
fragments, that it is difficult to make up an entire leaf from both of
them put together. To the eleventh, is attributed the aristocratic
provision against marriages between the patricians and the plebeians;
but as the law could not always prevent a flame, it was at last found
expedient to allow a match which was permitted five years later by the
Lex Canuleia.[19]
Such is a brief account of the Laws of the Twelve Tables; which although
cut up by the shears of time into very little bits, say much, in broken
sentences, to the honour of their authors. Even as late as the days of
Cicero, it was a part of a boy's education to learn these laws as a
_carmen necessarium_--or necessary verse--though they were not
necessarily in verse at all; for the better opinion is, that they were
all in prose, and that they were, in fact, as free from rhyme as they
were full of reason.
The Decemvirs had now completed their allotted task; but, though elected
for a limited time, they seemed determined to remain in their offices
after their office hours were fairly over. During the first Decemvirate
the members had taken the Government alternately for twenty-four hours
at a time, on the principle of every lucky dog having his day: but now
the whole ten assumed, at once, the insignia of royalty. Unable to
resist the fascination of the fasces, the Decemvirs were each of them
preceded, when they walked abroad, by a bundle of those imposing sticks;
the sight of which, at last, aroused public attention to the number of
rods that might be in pickle for the backs of the people.
Murmurs at home were echoed by rumours of war abroad; the Æquians and
Sabines had renewed their hostility; and the Decemvirs, who could not
levy troops or money, summoned the country gentlemen from their seats
out of town to their seats in the senate. Many honourable members
protested strongly against the Government, but agreed to the necessary
supplies; from which it seems that the practice of speaking one way and
voting another is a very ancient one. The Decemvirs stuck to their
places with an adhesiveness that might suggest a comparison with Roman
cement, but for the fact that the adhesiveness is not uncommon in modern
times, though the secret of the Roman cement has perished. Armies were
despatched to meet the foe, the people having met the expenses, and
Appius remained at home with one of his colleagues. The Roman forces
abroad had to contend with internal as well as external enemies; for a
venerable, but too garrulous soldier, one Dentatus, called also Siccius,
was constantly declaring himself heartily sick of the tyranny of the
Decemvirs. He had even talked of another secession of the plebs; and, to
prevent him from taking himself off, a plan was formed to cut him off by
a summary process. He received orders from his superior officer to go up
the country, with a few others, and select a spot where a tent might be
pitched, in the event of a pitched battle. His companions were assassins
in disguise, who, on arriving at a lonely spot, threw off their masks,
and appeared in their true features. They immediately fell upon the
astonished Dentatus; who must have seen through his assailants before he
died, for many were found perforated with the sword of the veteran.
While the rest of the Decemvirs were disgusting the people by their
tyranny, Appius was proceeding to render himself one of those objects of
contempt at which not only the Roman nose, but the nose of all humanity,
was destined to turn up, and at which scorn was to point her
imperishable finger-post.
[Illustration: Virginia carried off by a Minion in the pay of Appius.]
A centurion, named Virginius, had an only daughter, named Virginia, whom
her father, with a want of caution pardonable, perhaps, in a widower,
permitted to go backwards and forwards alone through the public streets
to a private day-school.[20] The young lady, in all the playful
innocence of sixteen, was in the habit of dancing and singing along the
thoroughfare, when the smallness of her feet, and the beauty of her
voice, struck the eye and ear of Appius. According to some authorities,
Virginia was attended by a nurse-maid; but it is scarcely necessary to
remark, that the same fatal fascination, which in military
neighbourhoods attracts female attention from children that ought to be,
to men that are, in arms, was no less powerful in the Via Sacra than in
Rotten Row,--by the banks of the Tiber, than on the shores of the
Serpentine. One morning, as Virginia was passing through the
market-place, on her way to the seminary, with her tablets and
school-bag--or more familiarly speaking, her slate and satchel--on her
arm, a minion, under the dominion of Appius, seized an opportunity for
seizing the maiden by the wrist. The nurse was either absent, or more
probably talking to one of the officers on duty round the corner; for
the fasces were as irresistible to the female servants of the day, as
the honied words and oilskin capes of a similar class of officials at a
much later period. Virginia screamed for assistance, and they only who
have heard the cry of a female in distress, can imagine the shrillness
of the shriek that rang through the market. Marcus--for such was the
minion's name--was instantly surrounded by a circle of respectable
tradesmen, who knew and desired to rescue Virginia. The smith, though he
had other irons in the fire, left his bellows to deal Marcus a blow;
the butcher, with uplifted cleaver, was preparing a most extensive chop;
and the money-changer was just on the point of paying off the ruffian in
a new kind of coin, when he declared Virginia to be his slave, and
announced himself as the client of the dreaded Appius. At this
formidable name, the smith's work seemed to be done, the butcher became
a senseless block, and there was a sudden change in the note of the
money-changer.
The officer on duty, who had arrested the attention of the nurse, being
at length called away by some trifling charge, had left her at leisure
to look after the more precious charge with which she had been
entrusted. As those usually talk the loudest who do the least, the
remonstrances of the female attendant were, no doubt, vehement in
proportion to her neglect; and, indeed, the confusion created by the
shrieks of the nurse was rather calculated to draw off the attention of
the crowd from Virginia herself, who was carried away by Marcus, with an
intimation that he should at once take the case before a magistrate.
Among the other consequences of the neglect of the maid, was an
attachment that had sprung up between the day-school miss and a young
gentleman, named Icilius. This impetuous youth, having heard of what had
happened, proceeded to the court at which the case was about to come on,
and which was presided over by the tyrant Appius. Icilius prayed for an
adjournment, on the ground of the absence of the young lady's father;
and it was found impossible to resist the application of such an earnest
solicitor. This point having been conceded, the friends of Virginia
applied for her admission to bail; and there was such a general tender
of securities among the throng, that Appius felt he could not calculate
on his own security if he refused the request that had been made to him.
The next morning the matter again came on, in the shape of a remanded
case; and Virginius, who had been on duty with his regiment the day
before, was now present at the hearing.
Had there been in those days the same love of the horrible that has
prevailed in our own times, the startling incident of a girl killed by
her own father, would have probably come down to us, through the medium
of the fullest reports, amplified by "other accounts," and a long
succession of "latest particulars." We must, however, on the present
occasion, be satisfied with the merest summary; for the Romans, in the
time of Appius, were equally destitute of relish for the details of the
spilling of blood, and of "family Sunday newspapers," whose respectable
proprietors are always ready to avail themselves of a sanguinary affair,
with an eagerness that seems to show that they look upon blood as
essential to the vitality of a journal, and involving the true theory of
the circulation. It remains only to be told, that Virginius, after
taking leave of his daughter, and finding her escape from the power of
Appius impossible, stabbed her with a knife, snatched up from a
butcher's stall, and, brandishing the weapon in the air, threatened
perdition to the tyrant. Appius, at the sight of the blood-stained
steel, felt his heart fluttering, as if affected by magnetic influence;
and losing, for the time, his own head, he offered ten thousand pounds
of copper for that of Virginius.[21]
It is the common characteristic of a moving spectacle to strike every
one motionless; and the guards of Appius, when ordered to seize
Virginius, found themselves fixed to the spot by so many stirring
incidents. In vain did Appius call upon his clients and his lictors to
do their duty. Among all his numerous attendants there was not a sole
but shook in its shoe, while the tyrant trembled from head to foot with
bootless anger. Urged at length by the commands of Appius, the officers
attempted to clear the spot, when a severe scuffle ensued, and the
authorities were assailed with all sorts of missiles. The market-place
supplied abundance of ammunition. Ducks and geese flew in all
directions. Some of the lictors found calves' heads suddenly lighting on
their shoulders. Others, who were treated, or rather maltreated, with
oysters, suffered severely from an incessant discharge of shells, and
many received the entire contents of a Roman feast, _ab ovo usque ad
malum_,--from the assault and battery of the egg, to the _malum in se_
of a well-aimed apple. The stalls of the dealers in vegetables were
speedily cleared of their contents; and a trembling lictor,
smothered--like a rabbit--in onions, might be seen, trying to creep away
unperceived, while others, who were receiving their desert in the form
of fresh fruit, fled, under a smart shower of grape, from the fury of
the populace. At length, the stock of the market being exhausted, the
assailants had recourse to stones; and Appius, feeling that he was
within a stone's throw of his life, entreated the lictors to remove him
from the scene of danger. Four of the stoutest of his attendants,
hoisting his curule chair on to their shoulders, made the best of their
way home, where Appius at length arrived, with the apple of his eye
damaged by a blow from a pear, his mouth choked with indignation and
mud, his lips blue with rage and grape juice, his robe caked with
confectionary, and his head, which had been made spongy with the loaves
thrown at it, affected with a sort of drunken roll.[22] Such is the
melancholy portrait which historical truth compels us to draw of the
unhappy Appius, for whom, however, no pity can be felt, even though his
case and his countenance presented many very sad features. The assault
in the market-place must have rendered it difficult for an artist of
the day to have taken his likeness, after the carrots, whirling about
his head, had settled in his hair, the rich oils having given to his
Roman nose a touch of grease, and the eggs thrown by the populace, who
continued to egg each other on, having lengthened his round cheeks into
an oval countenance.
[Illustration: _Appius Claudius punished by the People._]
Having gained his palace, the wretched tyrant ran up stairs, in the hope
that he might save himself by such a flight; but he was overtaken, and
thrown into gaol, where he, who had hitherto been permitted to do
precisely as he pleased, was allowed just rope enough to hang himself; a
process, it is believed, he performed, though the subject is so knotty,
that we are not prepared to disentangle it.
Virginius had returned to the camp, where the soldiers, having heard of
the fall of the decemvir, proceeded to hit him, as usual, when down,
renouncing the authority of Appius and his colleagues. The valour of the
insurgents was, however, of a negative kind; for in times of danger they
seemed to think absence of body better than presence of mind, and their
policy was to secede from the city. They withdrew to the Sacred Mount,
where ambassadors from the Senate were sent after them, to see if
matters might not be arranged; when the popular chiefs, with a sort of
one-sided liberality, in which some friends of freedom are too apt to
indulge, asked an amnesty for themselves, and the immediate putting to
death of the whole of the late government. The ambassadors, not liking a
precedent, which might be applied to succeeding administrations, of
which themselves might form a part, suggested the propriety of trying
the decemvirs first, and executing them, if necessary, afterwards. It
was some time before the friends of freedom and justice could bring
themselves to consent to the trial preceding the punishment; but upon
being assured that the decemvirs would have little chance of escape, it
was at length agreed to allow them the preliminary forms of a trial.
The plebeians having got the upper hand, became almost as intolerant as
the tyrants they had displaced,--a common error, unfortunately, among
the professing lovers of liberty. They demanded that the Tribunes should
be restored, which was well enough; that the Tribunate should be
perpetual,--which was an insolent and overbearing interference with the
will of any succeeding generation; and, by way of climax, they required
that any one suggesting the abolition of their favourite office should
be burnt as a traitor. They were no doubt fully justified in having a
will of their own, but they had no authority to entail that will upon a
subsequent age; and least of all had they the right to make bonfires of
those who were of a different way of thinking. It is true that, at such
a moment, few are willing to put their lives literally at stake, by
uttering their opinions; but these arbitrary pranks, so frequently
committed in the name of freedom, account sufficiently for the frequent
use of the words "more free than welcome." The truth is, that when
Liberty becomes a notorious public character, she seems to disappear
from private life; and, indeed, how is she to be found at home, if she
is occupied out of doors, knocking off the hats of those who will not
give her a cheer, or breaking the windows of those who will not
illuminate in her honour?
The plebeians having gained the permission of the Senate to hang and
burn to their hearts' content all who might give way to difference of
opinion, under the weak-minded impression that it would never alter
friendship, proceeded to the election of Tribunes in place of the
Decemvirs, who were thrown into prison. This is said to have been the
first instance of the incarceration of any one belonging to the
patrician order; and the sensation in the upper circles was immense when
they heard that a few exclusives of their own set were in actual
custody. Some aristocratic families went into mourning on the melancholy
occasion, and offered any fine, as a matter of course, for the release
of their kindred.
Appius Claudius and Spurius Appius--probably an illegitimate member of
the family--were thrown into the same cell, where, it is said, they made
away with themselves or each other; but whether there is any truth in
this story of the cell, or whether it is merely a cellular tissue of
falsehood, it is difficult to decide, after so long an interval. The
eight remaining Decemviri went into exile, or, in other words, were
transported for life; while Marcus Claudius, who had claimed Virginia,
repaired to Tibur, now Tivoli, and may be said to have taken his
conscience out to wash in the famous baths of the neighbourhood. Other
authorities say that he fled to avoid the ironing for life with which he
had been threatened, or that he feared the mangling to which he might be
exposed at home, at the hands of the infuriated populace.
Consuls had already been elected, in the persons of L. Valerius and M.
Horatius; but ten Tribunes were now chosen, among whom, of course, were
the leaders in the revolution; for it is a popular notion, that those
who have overthrown one government, must necessarily be the fittest
persons to construct another. It is, however, much easier to knock down
than to build up; and those who have shown themselves extremely clever
at bowling out, are often bowled out rapidly in turn, when they get
their innings.
It is a characteristic of nations, as well as of individuals, that those
who have no affairs of their own immediately on hand, are apt to concern
themselves with the affairs of their neighbours. The Romans having
arranged matters among themselves, began to look abroad, and having rid
themselves of domestic foes, they sent their Consuls, L. Valerius and M.
Horatius, to deal with foreign enemies. Valerius seized upon the camp of
the Æqui, just as they were canvassing their prospects under their
tents; and Horatius, after routing the Sabines, made them free of the
city; thus converting into respectable tradesmen those who had been
hitherto extremely troublesome customers.
When the Consuls returned to Rome, they expected the Senate would pay
them the usual compliment of a triumph; and instead of entering the city
at once, they put up at the temple of Bellona, outside the walls,
waiting for orders. The patricians, who were jealous of the generals,
thought to deprive them of the customary honours, by a low trick; but
the tribes dealing more fairly with the warriors, or, to use a familiar
expression, lending them a hand, decreed the triumph which the Senate
had denied to them. Thus did the patricians lose a privilege they had
abused; and the two Consuls drove four-in-hand into the city in spite of
them.