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more desire to humble his opponents than to benefit his inferiors or his followers. Forgiveness of inju ries was not a Roman virtue, and Manlius abandoned himself to the bitter hatred and vindictiveness that were accounted by most men blameworthy only when failing of being gratified. The secret meetings concerning which he had been before accused were soon renewed, with the very designs that had then been falsely urged as the reasons for his arrest and imprisonment. Yet the only treason of which he appears capable was against the authority, or, at most, the safety, of those who had proved their hostility to him by means as treasonable, if we read of them correctly, as any he now sought to use.

Not long after the liberation of Manlius, and probably before he had done much to organize his plans, defensive or aggressive, his old enemy, Camillus, was chosen, for the fifth time, to the consular tribunate.24 The contrast between the triumph of his rival and his own shame would act like fiery poison upon a soul like that of Manlius; especially at a moment of resolution such as had now arrived. Some charge, perhaps that of aspiring after royalty, was made in relation to him before the Senate, who straightway authorized the magistrates to take any measures, legal or illegal, as they pleased, against him, as an enemy of the public safety; at which two Tribunes of the Plebeians summoned him to stand his trial before the Centuries. But when, on the day

24 A. C. 382. Liv., VI. 18.

appointed, he appeared, surrounded by a throng of citizens who owed him their lives or their liberties, his wounds bared and his arms outstretched to the Capitol, there was not one of the five classes, nor one, perhaps, of all the Centuries, to believe Manlius guilty of treachery to his country or his countrymen. His adversaries in office, as violent against him as he could possibly have been against them, adjourned the trial to another place, from which there was no prospect towards the Capitol,25 and assigned a day before which they would have more time for preparing their assault than Manlius for securing his defence. It is reported, and on good authority, that Camillus was named Dictator to conduct the prosecution against his unfortunate antagonist, over whom he certainly triumphed; though it does not appear certain whether Manlius submitted to a second trial, or whether, resisting it, he seized the Capitol, and there perished in endeavouring to defend himself by force. He died abjured by his family and branded by his foes as if he had been an outlaw 27

Thus fell another martyr to the highest cause it was then possible for a Roman to espouse. Even this, though not the cause of the whole nation, much less of its perfect liberty, but simply that of justice or generosity, as it might be called, to the mass of the Plebeians, would have none but martyrs for its advocates, until there were men to support it

25 Plut., Cam., 36. Liv., VI. 20. 26 Zonaras, VII. 24.

27 Liv., VI. 20. Dion Cass., Frag. Peiresc., XXXI.

first and themselves last, if the inducement to supporting it must still be the support they thus could give themselves. Cassius was slain for want of able, Manlius for want of willing defenders; but Manlius, maddened by even worse contumely than befell the others, yet wanting neither ready nor capable followers, was in a great degree his own destroyer. Wars followed, as if his requiem were the clash of swords or the groans of dying men; and the fearful notes were caught up within the very streets of Rome, amongst those whom pestilence smote or bondage crushed with chains. They who, meanwhile, like Camillus perhaps, rejoiced that Manlius was fallen, or the battle won, or the wretched humbled, were not the men whom God long suffers, even where He has doomed them to walk in darkness. A new leaf may be turned in our history. The contests amongst Patricians to give or to refuse the right are virtually told; and we shall begin anew to read how much the willingness of the higher classes to grant was surpassed by the energy of the lower to win the extension of liberty in Rome.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE LICINIAN LAWS.

"It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good."- MADISON, Federalist, No. X.

ONE of the Tribunes, chosen, as we have formerly supposed, after the return of the Plebeians from the Sacred Hill, was a Licinius.' The first Consular Tribune elected from the Plebeians was another, Licinius Calvus.2 The third great man of this distinguished family was Caius Licinius Calvus Stolo, who, in the prime of life and of popularity, was chosen among the Tribunes of the Plebeians for the fourteenth year3 of that sorrowful season which followed the invasion of the Gauls. The ill-fated Manlius was dead seven years before; but Camillus, at the head of his extreme party, was still living in green old age. Such were the memories and such the times of Licinius Stolo; and there is little to add to these few dates and names, except that he was married to the daughter of an eminent Patrician, surrounded by devoted friends, and possessed of a very

1 Livy makes him one of the first two. II. 33. Cf. Dion. Hal., VI.

89.

2 Liv.,
V. 12.

3 Chosen in A. C. 376 for 375, the dates, again, being altogether arbitrary.

large estate, in the year of his legislation, or, as it might be styled, his revolution. His character may be better judged as we read on.

5

Another Plebeian, Lucius Sextius by name, was chosen Tribune for the same year. Apparently a tried friend of Licinius, whose purposes, at all events, aroused his sympathy and strenuous coöperation, Sextius was younger than his more famous colleague, but equally earnest and more sincere. Marcus Fabius Ambustus, latterly a Consular Tribune, and of high descent, as his name denotes, was the father-in-law of Licinius, and his strong supporter. A tradition, of the same value as those which made Manlius and Cassius ambitious for a crown, represented the Patrician and the Plebeian as having been united in designs by a whim of the wife and daughter through whom they were connected by domestic ties; but the plans of Licinius Stolo were far too widely extended and too deeply laid to have sprung from a woman's envy. Some revolutions, it is true, are the effect of an instant's passion or an hour's weakness; nor can they

4"Adolescens." Liv., VI. 34. 5 Liv., VI. 22.

6 The story ran as follows:Stolo's wife was one of two sisters, the elder being married to a Patrician, at this time a Consular Tribune. The younger, being on a visit in her sister's house, was so startled by the unusual knocking of the lictors by whom the Tribune was attended, at the door, that the elder

laughed at her fears with some scorn

for her having married a Plebeian. Liv., VI. 34. It is only necessary to repeat the common remark, that this timid creature who had never heard the knocking of the lictors was the daughter of a Patrician and a Consular Tribune. Besides, the aim of Licinius Stolo was not to make himself a Consular Tribune, but to do away with the office altogether.

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