THE DECEMVIRS.
B.C. 450.
The Romans began to see what mischiefs their quarrels did, and they
agreed to send three of their best and wisest men to Greece to study the
laws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any of them could be put in
force at Rome.
To get the new code of laws which they brought home put into working
order, it was agreed for the time to have no consuls, prætors, nor
tribunes, but ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine Athenian
archons. They were called Decemvirs (_decem_, ten; _vir_, a man),
and at their head was Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who had
killed himself to avoid being condemned for his harshness. At first they
governed well, and a very good set of laws was drawn up, which the
Romans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but Appius soon began to give
way to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a war
with the Æqui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatus
said it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundred
and twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudius
sent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army that
he might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when he
advised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and
sent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretches
instructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass
they set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock and
fought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come near
him, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down on
his head. Then they went back with a story that they had been attacked
by the enemy, which was believed, till a party went out to bury the
dead, and found there were only Roman corpses all lying round the
crushed body of Sicinius, and that none were stripped of their armor or
clothes. Then the true history was found out, but the Decemvirs
sheltered the commanders, and would believe nothing against them.
Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all honest men even more
than this treachery to the brave old soldier. The Forum was not only the
place of public assembly for state affairs, but the regular
market-place, where there were stalls and booths for all the wares that
Romans dealt in--meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold in
earthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even booths where reading and
writing was taught to boys and girls, who would learn by tracing letters
in the sand, and then by writing them with an iron pen on a waxen table
in a frame, or with a reed upon parchment. The children of each family
came escorted by a slave--the girls by their nurse, the boys by one
called a pedagogue.
[Illustration: DEATH OF VIRGINIA.]
Appius, when going to his judgment-seat across the Forum, saw at one of
these schools a girl of fifteen reading her lesson. She was so lovely
that he asked her nurse who she was, and heard that her name was
Virginia, and that she was the daughter of an honorable plebeian and
brave centurion named Virginius, who was absent with the army fighting
with the Æqui, and that she was to marry a young man named Icilius as
soon as the campaign was over. Appius would gladly have married her
himself, but there was a patrician law against wedding plebeians, and he
wickedly determined that if he could not have her for his wife he would
have her for his slave.
There was one of his clients named Marcus Claudius, whom he paid to get
up a story that Virginius' wife Numitoria, who was dead, had never had
any child at all, but had bought a baby of one of his slaves and had
deceived her husband with it, and thus that poor Virginia was really his
slave. As the maiden was reading at her school, this wretch and a band
of fellows like him seized upon her, declaring that she was his
property, and that he would carry her off. There was a great uproar, and
she was dragged as far as Appius' judgment-seat; but by that time her
faithful nurse had called the poor girl's uncle Numitorius, who could
answer for it that she was really his sister's child. But Appius would
not listen to him, and all that he could gain was that judgment should
not be given in the matter until Virginius should have been fetched from
the camp.
[Illustration: CHARIOT RACES.]
Virginius had set out from the camp with Icilius before the messengers
of Appius had reached the general with orders to stop him, and he came
to the Forum leading his daughter by the hand, weeping, and attended by
a great many ladies. Claudius brought his slave, who made false oath
that she had sold her child to Numitoria; while, on the other hand, all
the kindred of Virginius and his wife gave such proof of the contrary as
any honest judge would have thought sufficient, but Appius chose to
declare that the truth was with his client. There was a great murmur of
all the people, but he frowned at them, and told them he knew of their
meetings, and that there were soldiers in the Capitol ready to punish
them, so they must stand back and not hinder a master from recovering
his slave.
Virginius took his poor daughter in his arms as if to give her a last
embrace, and drew her close to the stall of a butcher where lay a great
knife. He wiped her tears, kissed her, and saying, "My own dear little
girl, there is no way but this," he snatched up the knife and plunged it
into her heart, then drawing it out he cried, "By this blood, Appius, I
devote thy blood to the infernal gods."
He could not reach Appius, but the lictors could not seize him, and he
mounted his horse and galloped back to the army, four hundred men
following him, and he arrived still holding the knife. Every soldier who
heard the story resolved no longer to bear with the Decemvirs, but to
march back to the city at once and insist on the old government being
restored. The Decemvir generals tried to stop them, but they only
answered, "We are men with swords in our hands." At the same time there
was such a tumult in the city, that Appius was forced to hide himself in
his own house while Virginia's corpse was carried on a bier through the
streets, and every one laid garlands, scarfs, and wreaths of their own
hair upon it. When the troops arrived, they and the people joined in
demanding that the Decemvirs should be given up to them to be burnt
alive, and that the old magistrates should be restored. However, two
patricians, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, were able so to arrange
matters that the nine comparatively innocent Decemvirs were allowed to
depose themselves, and Appius only was sent to prison, where he killed
himself rather than face the trial that awaited him. The new code of
laws, however, remained, but consuls, prætors, tribunes, and all the
rest of the magistrates were restored, and in the year 445 a law was
passed which enabled patricians and plebeians to intermarry.
[Illustration]