any election that might be made from the Plebeians.46 In after years, though not a native, but a Latin-born citizen, Curius became Consul, general, and conqueror.47 His victories over the Samnites and the Sabines were enough to pave his way to any authority or to any opulence he might have desired amongst his countrymen; but, instead of seeking his own interests, he lent all his influence and energy to effect a distribution of the public lands in relief of the needier citizens, whose wants must have been increased, as usual, by the ten years' warfare that had passed. A first assignment of seven jugers was followed by a second of the same extent and to the same individuals; 48 and when both these together proved insufficient to relieve a large number from their embarrassments, Curius appears to have joined some Tribunes in proposing a law by which the abolition of all existing debts was again declared.49 To such propositions there were sure to be more opponents than supporters; nor was the Senate, which is 46 Cic., Brut., 14. "Quod fuit ground that I know for separating permagnum," adds Cicero. 47 In the year A. C. 290. Liv., Epit. XI. De Vir. Illust., XXXIII. See Cic., Pro Murena, 8. 48 Quaterna dena agri jugera viritim populo divisit." De Vir. Illust., XXXIII. It is reasonable to suppose that there were two allot ments made rather than one, because the number of seven jugers was commonly taken as the limit of a single assignment; but there is no the two assignments from one another by any considerable interval of time. See, however, note 22 to Ch. XXXIV. of Arnold's History. The first consulship of Curius Dentatus was in A. C. 290; and it is in that or the subsequent year that I suppose him to have begun and ended his exertions in favor of the lower citizens. 49 Zonaras, VIII. 3. especially named 50 as having been in opposition, the only body or the only party to resist the discharge of debts, however the division of lands had been allowed. The curtain is drawn over the incidents which followed; and the single glimpse to be caught of Curius Dentatus in the midst of a body-guard does not assure us of his wisdom in promoting the cause he was unusually wise to have even started. There can be no doubt, however, of his uprightness; and it is still recorded, that, though offered a large share in the public domain, as the merited reward of his services, by which, indeed, the domain in question had been acquired, he refused to take more than the rest of his countrymen had received. 52 He knew, it seems, the worth of example to the rich, as well as that of succour to the poor; but he could not know the vanity of both, where rich and poor were sundered as they were in Rome. The moment Curius disappears, the questions of relief to the lower classes, and of union between them and the higher, sink into the background; the full front of our history being again occupied by parties in pursuit of merely political objects, which could 50 Appian., De Reb. Samnit., V. De Vir. Illust., XXXIII. Fragm. Nat. Hist., XIX. 26. 51 Ibid. 52 Compare Val. Max., IV. 3, sect. 5, with Plin., Nat. Hist., XVIII. 4. The former's story of the answer to the Sabine ambassadors testifies to the same simplicity, —in that case, nevertheless, if true, a little affected. Val. Max., loc. cit. Plin., 53 He is, again, however, mentioned as directing the canal from the lake of Velinus, through which the water still dashes down to Terni, and likewise as superintending the construction of an aqueduct for Rome. only be imperfect, - though gained through orderly and peaceful toils. The first event, however, following the consulship of Curius Dentatus, at an interval of four years, was a revolution, as appears from the laws which brought it to an end. Even these will not fill up the sketch, whose broken outlines consist in a Plebeian secession, after long sedition, to the Janiculan hill, the dismay of the Senate, increased by the approach of a hostile army,55—and the elevation of Quintus Hortensius, a great man of the popular party,56 to the dictatorship, in which capacity he called the people together, and induced or permitted them to pass a law investing the decrees of the Tribes with plenary independence and authority.57 The interrupted narrative continues with the death of Hortensius, 58 and the appointment of a successor, who is merely conjectured to have been Caius Mænius,59 the Dictator in the times of the conspiracies, six-and-twenty years before,60 because there 54" Plebs propter æs alienum, post graves et longas seditiones, ad ultimum secessit in Janiculum." Liv., Epit. XI. See Plin., Nat. Hist., XVI. 15, in note 57. 55 Zonaras, VIII. 2. 56 His name is mentioned by Livy, Pliny, and in the Fasti; his repute is proved by his appointment at such a time. 57Q. Hortensius, quum plebes secessisset in Janiculum, legem in Esculeto [the Oak-Grove] tulit, ut quod ea jussisset, omnes Quirites teneret." Plin. Nat. Hist., XVI. 15. "Pro legibus placuit et ea [plebiscita] observari lege Hortensia." Digest. Lib. I. Tit. II. sect. 8. See also Gaii Instit., I. sect. 3, and Aul. Gell., XV. 27. There was another law, or another clause of the same law, to make the market-days business days for the whole people. See Arnold's History Vol. II. p. 384, and the reference there to Macrobius. 58 Liv., Epit. XI. 59 Niebuhr's History, Vol. III. p. 196. 60 Ch. VIII. p. 33. was a Mænius in sufficient authority, after Hortensius died, to procure the passage of a law by which the Curies were deprived of their right to sanction, and, reversely, to annul, the elections of the higher magistrates.6 61 It can only be supposed that the law of Hortensius, though probably directed against the control of the Senate rather than that of the Curies 62 over the bills accepted in the Tribes, was, together with the law added by Mænius, intended to increase the powers of the great assemblies of the Tribes and Centuries, through which the popular party acted, and in which it then possessed the upperhand. But whether it was this party that occupied the Janiculum, or the lower classes who broke out into insurrection on account of their sufferings, and then allowed themselves to be managed by the popular leaders, who pressed their laws as if these were to clothe the naked or feed the starving, must still be a mystery. One further conjecture may be permitted, — that, in consequence of the endeavours of Curius Dentatus and the Tribunes to relieve the poor, these, on the one hand, were disposed to trust their wants to the chief men amongst the popular party, of whom, on the other hand, the greater number were urged by the same efforts to strengthen their authority and be -- 61 Cic., Brut., 14; Pro Plancio, 3. Publilian laws. See Ch. VIII. pp. Liv., I. 17. 62 Because the power of the Curies to accept or reject the laws of the Tribes had already been taken from them, as is supposed, by the 18-20. This Hortensian law took the same right, according to Niebuhr, from the Senate. See his History, Vol. II. p. 168, Vol. III. p. 74. prepared against the claims that might be made upon their compassion or their justice. Somewhere about the present period, there occurred a change in the organization of the assembly of Centuries, concerning which, however, there is but little, if any thing, really known.63 It seems to have consisted in substituting the Tribes in place of the classes, according to which the Centuries were previously enrolled; but, as the assembly still continued aristocratical, in contrast with the more democratical assembly of the Tribes, the alteration may be believed to have been but one of form. The Curies, on the other hand, long before assailed, received their mortal wound from the Mænian law, and, in the course of a few years, were simply represented at the elections by a band of thirty lictors, in whom their name and their number were supposed to be perpetuated. Other institutions and other doctrines, over whose fall there would or ought to have been more rejoicing than could have been provoked by that of the broken-down Curies, still kept their ground. In the year after the consulship of Lucius Volumnius,64 a time was set apart, by order of the Senate, for solemn devotions, in consequence of many strange presages that had been observed and feared. In the season of supplication, the wife of Volumnius, by name Virginia, a woman of the highest birth, came to the tem 63 See the honest discussion of the whole question in the second Appendix to Arnold's second volume. 64 Therefore, A. C. 295. |