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with Plebeians, perhaps, amongst them, into the Forum. It was an onslaught rather than a procession, as all men knew; and the eyes that were strained to see the Dictator, whom the lictors and the Senators attended, soon beheld Camillus, swelling, as he is described, with wrath and menace 19 to crush bills, Tribunes, and Tribes beneath the authority he had in secret, a moment before, received. The old warrior did not doubt that the sun would stand still at his command; and, with his own voice, he forbade the Tribes to throw another vote, and ordered the Tribunes to see that his pleasure was obeyed. A pause ensued amongst the people; if the Tribunes hesitated, the bills were doomed: but, far from that, they bade the Tribes go on and vote as they had begun. Camillus, astonished, but more infuriated, commanded his lictors to break up the assembly at once, and proclaim, as they did so, that, if a man lingered in the Forum, the Dictator would call every one fit for service to his standard, and march from Rome without delay. Again the Tribunes dared resistance, and, this time, something more. They declared, that, if the Dictator did not instantly recall his lictors and retract his proclamation, they, the Tribunes, according to their right, would put a fine upon him five times the highest rate of the Census, so soon as his dictatorship expired. The acclamations of the Tribes proved that the threat would be fulfilled; and Camillus retreated, so fairly overcome,

19" Plenus iræ minarumque." Liv., VI. 38.

as to abdicate immediately afterward, under some pretence of faulty auspices.20

Such a victory, so far beyond any triumph of the lower estate in former times, was enough for one day; and the assembly separated to meet again in greater calmness at another time. But before it could be again convened, the Plebeians seem to have been worked upon in some way to such a degree, that, when the four bills were submitted, without interruption, to the decision of the Tribes, the two concerning lands and debts were alone accepted. The only circumstance to throw light upon this sudden change of mind, besides the natural motives for preferring one bill to another according to the different wants of the different classes, is the appointment to the dictatorship of a moderate Patrician, who, himself connected with the Licinian family, chose a member of that house for his master of the Knights.21 It may have been their profession of perfect readiness to support the first two bills of their kinsman, the Tribune, in case he would abandon the last two, that moved the majority in the Tribes to set him the example of compliance with demands it did not harm them, as they thought, to refuse. Licinius was disappointed, but not confounded. With an ill-suppressed sneer at the selfishness as well as the blindness of those who had voted

20 Liv., VI. 38. Compare Plut., been Consular Tribune the year Cam., 39.

21 The Dictator was Publius Manlius Capitolinus; his master, the first Plebeian who held that office, Caius Licinius Calvus, who had

preceding the first election of his relative to the tribuneship. Liv., VI. 31. Diod. Sic., XV. 57. See Liv., VI. 39.

only for what they most wanted themselves, he bade them mark that they could not eat, if they would not drink; and totally refused to separate the bills. That the Plebeians soon determined for themselves to eat and drink, as they were recommended, is evident from the reëlection of Licinius and Sextius to be Tribunes for the tenth time.23

The fourth bill, concerning the Decemvirs, was almost instantly laid before the Tribes, carried through them, and accepted by the higher assemblies. But why it was detached from the other three, after the resolution of the Tribunes to keep all four together had been apparently confirmed by the votes of the Plebeians in the reëlection of their magistrates, is by no means evident. The reason may

have been, that the way to the consulship might thus be smoothed, and the passage of the bill concerning it, the most disputed of the four, might be secured.* Or the proceedings of the Tribunes may have been interrupted by a fresh invasion of the Gauls, in consequence of which Camillus was once more appointed Dictator, and all the energies of the Commonwealth were diverted to the defence of its own or the immediately neighbouring territories against the barbarians.25

As soon, however, as the interruption, on whatever account it happened, ceased, the struggle between the

22 Dion Cass., Frag. XXXIII., with the note of Reimar.

24 Livy says, "Graduque eo jam via facta ad consulatum videbatur."

23 For the year A. C. 366. Liv., VI. 42. VI. 42.

25 See Liv., VI. 42.

supporters and the opponents of the three remaining bills was resumed and decided. The Tribes were persuaded, we know not how, to pass the bills, and the only mention concerning their ratification is of greater conflicts than had yet arisen; 26 but the bills were laws, at last. The revolution was none the less important, because its completion was shrouded in silence, or told only in traditions of desperate commotions.

Lucius Sextius, the faithful Tribune, was elected by the Centuries the first Consul from the Plebeians. But the Curies refused to confirm his election by the grant of his commission, the name, in our language, corresponding to the Imperium. And again, as through a riven cloud, the lightning seems to flash over terrors and contentions, which the historian affirms to have wellnigh ended in a secession of the Plebeians.27

It is here, too, that Camillus is introduced in the broken story, which crowns his long life with far the purest renown it at any time attained. Either holding the powers with which he had been armed to meet the Gauls, or else again appointed to the dictatorship for the present emergency, he came between the angry factions of the Commonwealth, as the bearer of olive-branches to either side. At his proposal, though it was not made without the counsels of others more wise than he had been, the Patricians

26 Liv., VI. 42.

27 66 Prope secessionem plebis res terribilesque alias minas civilium

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66

certaminum venit." Liv., VI. 42. See Ovid., Fast., I. 641 et seq.

consented to the confirmation of the Consul Sextius, while the Plebeians agreed that a new magistracy should be instituted for the Patricians, under the old name of the consulship,-the prætorship,-to which a great part of the judicial authority 23 was then transferred from the office now opened to the Plebeians. Long-enduring passions were for a moment stilled, and the old Dictator began the building of a temple to the goddess Concord.29 The Senate decreed that a fourth day for the Plebeians should be added to the festival which the Patricians yearly celebrated as the Great Games of Rome; and the opportunity was improved, perhaps insidiously,20 to introduce a new Patrician magistracy, that of the Curule Ediles, to conduct the Games in the name of the whole people.

The consequences of the revolution which was thus achieved by Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius are to be measured only as we proceed with the subse

28 Strictly speaking, the province of the Prætor was the city; where he not only administered justice ("qui jus in urbe diceret," says Livy, VI. 42), but acted as a deputy for the Consuls in their absence, and even took the place of the Censors for the three years and a half during which, out of every five years, there were none of those magistrates in office. The first Prætor was the son of the great Camillus.

30 The words in the Digest are as follows: -"Tunc ut aliquo pluris patres haberent, placuit duos ex numero patrum constitui: ita facti sunt Ediles Curules." Lib. I. Tit. II. 2, sect. 26. If the games had been previously celebrated by the Consuls, the purpose of the curule ædileship is very plain. The story of the refusal of the Plebeian Ædiles to manage the games is the more absurd, because the Plebeians were still excluded from the spectacle.

29 Plut., Camill., 42. Liv., VI. Cf. Liv., VI. 42, with Niebuhr's

42.

Hist., Vol. III. p. 24.

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