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not be worth following to their new places, so readily do most of them appear to have joined hands with the Patricians; it being, in fact, nearly certain that none were elevated but such as showed their willingness to renounce their associations with the Plebeians.21 A great deal is told us in the report, that many of the lower estate went over to the exiled king; 22 for there would have been no refugees, had the Patricians used their power with any decent moderation. Yet though the Plebeians were still nearly helpless, some of the cords around them were severed; the laws of Servius were renewed; the tribunals and the festivals of olden time were restored; and some possessions in lands and stores, that appear to have belonged to the Tarquins, were soon after distributed amongst the poor." Weeds, as they were esteemed, the Plebeians were destined to be the better growth of Rome.

With the exception of the Plebeians, whose desertion, as we have reason to suppose, to Tarquin was the only expedient they had of safety, there were no other movements in his behalf than amongst the Patricians themselves. It is of course doubtful how far any explanation can be made of the motives to discontentment, easy, indeed, to conjecture, if we remember that they who had been in the highest favor with the king would naturally be most suspiciously regarded, and perhaps most insolently treated, after

21 The order of the Knights was thus the Seminarium Senatus. Liv., XVII. 61.

22 Dion. Hal., V. 26.

23 Dion. Hal., V. 2. Plin., Nat. Hist., XVIII. 4.

his flight. A conspiracy was formed, in which the sons of Brutus and the nephews of his colleague, Collatinus, engaged, to restore the exiled monarch; but the unfaithful Patricians were detected and brought to punishment. Brutus, though not obliged to sit in judgment upon his sons, chose to give his countrymen and their posterity an example of the patriotism he would have them imitate; and yet the father's heart was touched in the midst of what was considered the Consul's heroism.24 He was faithful, indeed, to the highest duty of which he was aware; and his name remained a watchword, as long as a Roman survived, to that unshrinking devotion to the Commonwealth which worked both the noblest and the fearfullest deeds in the history of Rome.25 The milder nature of Collatinus revolted at what he esteemed to be but barbarous obedience to the laws, and sought to save his nephews, even after Brutus had sacrificed his sons; but the people pronounced their doom, and Collatinus himself was forced to resign his consulship and go into exile. The warning against a wavering service to the Commonwealth was contained in the story of his humiliation.

24 Eminente patrio animo inter publicæ pœnæ ministerium." Liv., II. 5.

Three lines from Leandro Moratin describe the other aspect of the

Scene:

"Mudo terror al vulgo circunstante

Ocupa. Bruto se levanta y dice:
Gracias, Jove immortal, ya es libre Roma!"
Cf. the Æn., V. 821 et seq.

26

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Publius Valerius, another spectator of Lucretia's death, was chosen in the room of the deposed Consul; and Brutus dying not long after, in battle against the Etruscans, Valerius became the principal personage in the Commonwealth. He was of so just a character, apparently," that many of the Patricians mistrusted his intentions towards them, or rather towards the abuses of which they were guilty; and although he made some formal concession to their authority, perhaps, as the story goes, by ordering his lictors to lower their fasces in presence of the Curies, in token of his dependence upon the order to which he belonged, nevertheless, when the Patricians, or the better disposed, showed that they were ready to follow him, he brought his famous laws before the Centuries. Two evils appear to have been most urgently in need of a remedy, or rather two in one, - which was the insecurity of the Commonwealth, so long as the Patricians were maltreating the Plebeians, and the members of both classes were leaning towards a reconciliation with the dethroned king. Accordingly, Valerius proposed two laws, — one granting the right of appeal "from a magistrate," as the phrase was, "to the people,”—the other forbidding the election of any magistrate unless by general consent, with more especial penalties against attempts to restore the fallen

27 Only apparently; for the common story ran, that his building a great house of stone upon the Velian hill above the Forum was the

cause of their suspicion. But the

same story made him out so poor that he left nothing to pay for his funeral. Val. Max., IV. 4. 1. Liv., III. 16.

or to raise a new monarchy.23 The latter law requires no commentary; but the former would be unintelligible without one. Not only had the privilege of appeal to the Curies been in possession of the Patricians from time almost immemorial, but it had also been possible, as it appears, for them, and perhaps for the Plebeians likewise, to appeal from the sentence of one to the decision of another officer, military or judicial, as he might be, during the kingly period.29 The appeal to an assembly, however, was considered as much more important a right than that to a magistrate as trial by jury is than trial before a single judge; and it was this which the law of Valerius secured to the Plebeians, by giving them their appeal, either to the Centuries, or, as is much more probable, to the Tribes; 30 either of which, if convened for a trial, would be presided over by the Quæstors, as they were called, of Parricide, two especial magistrates, elected by the Curies.32 The operation of these laws, to be witnessed as we prosecute our history, will prove that Valerius deserved the name he gained by their proposal, of the People's Friend.33 With the Plebeians

28 Plut., Publ., 11. Dion. Hal., V. 19. Liv., II. 8.

29 The appeal to the assembly was called Provocatio; that to the magistrate Appellatio, of which there is a later instance in Liv., III. 13. It may have been of later origin than above described.

30 See references in note 28, and those in Niebuhr's notes 1177, 1178, Vol. I. Göttling makes the appeal to the Centuries. Röm. Staatsv., Sect. 100.

31 Festus, s. vv. Quæstores, Parici. "Nam parricida non utique is, qui parentem occidisset, dicebatur, sed qualemcumque hominem," etc., after the law of Numa.

32 Tac., Ann., XI. 22.

33 Publicola; which he obtained in consequence of his legislation. Liv., II. 8. He was the author of other laws. Ibid., and Plut., Publ., 11, 12.

the memory of the homes they had abandoned and the rights they had surrendered must, at last, have been exchanged for the hope of the rights and the homes to be had in Rome. The Commonwealth rested upon the Valerian laws.34

35

The fair features of the early Commonwealth are tinted with the kindliness and the justice of which Valerius appears to have been the champion; but there are darker aspects to which we must turn, covered with shadows cast on them, at first, by wars. Of the large number of subject or allied towns which an ancient treaty with Carthage 36 describes as having been in the dependence of Rome, during the first months after the revolution, the greater part were soon in arms against their ally or mistress. Many joined their forces with those of the Tarquins, eager to humble the people by whom they had been conquered or in some way mortified; and at the first opportunity, one third, at least, of the Roman Tribes themselves 37 returned to their older alliance or inde

66

34 Βεβαίαν τε πίστιν ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐλευ θερίας τοὺς δημοτικοὺς λαβεῖν, “ Inasmuch as the Plebeians gained a sure confidence in their freedom." Dion. Hal., V. 19.

35 66 Equo et modesto jure agitatum." Sallust., Frag. Hist., Lib. I. See Liv., II. 9.

Sallust, born in A. C. 86, and dying in 34, wrote five books of Histories (Historia), besides the War of Jugurtha and the Conspiracy of Catiline. See Book III. ch. 7, of this history.

36 Polyb., III. 22.

Polybius, an Arcadian by birth, came to Rome in A. C. 167, as one of the Achæan exiles. He wrote his history of the contemporary period from A. C. 220 to 146, in his old age.

37 Livy (II. 21) mentions the first increase from the number of twenty Tribes. Under Servius there had been thirty. It is probable that the lost ten were Etruscan.

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