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upon the fiercely contested field; but the fortune of the day was with the Romans. On their return to Rome, Marcus Fabius, refusing to triumph for the success he confessed to have cost him and the Commonwealth dear, devoted himself to the care of his wounded soldiers, for whom he provided quarters in his own house and with his friends, until they should be cured.

The Plebeians forgot the past, in amazement at the present behaviour of the Consul and his family; and when Caso Fabius came forward again as a candidate for his third consulship, the lower classes were as anxious as the highest that he should succeed. He, too, appeared to be transformed. After striving, though vainly, to persuade the Senate to consent to the long-deferred division of the public lands amongst those whose blood and sweat had gained them, he twice marched forth at the head of his army to gather the laurels that are casily found by a general whom his soldiers love. Scarcely returned from his second campaign, in which he saved his colleague's forces from destruction by the troops from Veii, Caso came into the Senate-house, followed by every member of his family. The Patricians, who had thwarted his best designs, might have feared he came to do them violence; but the words he is reported to have uttered were neither those of anger "Send us out," he said, "against the

nor revenge.

17 Non patrum magis quam rum sanguine ac sudore partus sit." plebis studiis." Liv., II. 48.

18" Verum esse habere eos, quo

Ibid.

20

people of Veii, and take ye care of other wars yourselves. We promise to protect the majesty of the Roman name.' 19 On the following day, the whole family, with one exception, appeared in arms, with households and clients, all headed by the Consul in his military robes; and proceeding through the streets to the gates by which they were to pass out, but through which they never would return, they bade their friends farewell and responded to the acclamations of the people as if their march had been to keep a festival. Within two years, not one of three hundred and six, who had gone forth, remained 21 to keep the enemy away or to show the Plebeians that there were some amongst the Patricians to count them as fellow-citizens.

Such are the outlines of a legend which cannot be dismissed without a comment upon the historical substance of which it was, in olden time, composed. The illustration it offers of the fervor of Roman patriotism is not nearly so valuable as the proof it conveys that the divisions which existed between the Patricians had so widened or thickened in the time of the Fabii, as to make a family of their authority desirous to leave their homes to their more successful adversaries. The Plebeians, it seems, were no more capable of defending them than of protecting Cassius; and the faction which sought to triumph over the

19 Liv., II. 48.

20 Niebuhr surmises that the one was not a youth, as commonly related, but a full-grown man of contrary sentiments to his kinsmen. Cf. Dion. Hal., IX. 22.

21 Liv., II. 50. As for the number, see Diod. Sic., XI. 53, and Aul. Gell., XVII. 21. Cf. Dion. Hal., IX. 15.

lower estate at all hazards still, undoubtedly, prevailed. Another aspect comes over the procession of the Fabii, as they departed to meet the dangers they preferred abroad to wearier and more perilous conflicts at home; and though the acclamations were as hearty and the farewells as tender, a different chord from that echoed in the story was struck in those who stayed and those who went away. But the Plebeians were not so utterly feeble as when Cassius died. Titus Menenius, a son of old Menenius Agrippa, and then Consul, who was encamped not far from the Fabii at the moment of their surprise and slaughter, was accused, at the end of his term, by two Tribunes, Considius and Titus Genucius, of having looked on, as they would say, while the best men in Rome were perishing before his eyes. The Patricians exerted themselves, in every way, to save him from the judgment of the Tribes before whom he was brought to trial.2 The memory of his father spared the son a severer sentence than a fine; and the Tribunes were contented to have proved their grateful remembrance of those whom he was believed, for party motives, to have betrayed. Menenius died of shame.23

22

22 This, as previously mentioned, is a doubtful point in the eyes of some good scholars. Livy writes, however, in this (II. 52) as in the other instances (II. 52, 54, 57, 61), much rather of the Tribes than of the Centuries. The word Populus is a strong argument with those who would have us read Centuries: e. g. "rei ad populum" (II. 54), reus ad judicium populi" (II. 61). But Populus seems only to mean

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that it was one of the great trials, the Judicia Populi, as they were called, without any peculiar reference to the Centuries. The reader will pardon this second note on the same subject, if he reflect that the whole chapter which he is reading depends upon the activity credited to the Tribunes and the Tribes.

23 Liv., II. 51, 52. Dion. Hal., IX. 27.

It does not, after this, seem probable that the Tribunes would, for want of vigor or understanding, allow their friends and advocates of the higher estate to perish by execution or in exile. The transition, indeed, from idle looking-on, as in the persecution of Cassius, or tardy appreciation, as in the overthrow of the Fabii, to zealous and successful retaliation upon one, like Coriolanus, who had injured the Plebeians, is so striking, that it is to be feared lest the legend be placed too soon in the sketch we are endeavouring to design. Trusting, however, to the great modern historian of Rome, who advances the date of the story concerning Coriolanus some twenty or thirty years,24 we may here relate the first actual triumph which the Tribunes of the Plebeians effected against their generally more powerful antagonists.

We must take for granted that the arrogance of Caius Martius Coriolanus was heightened in the legend, because of its congeniality to the pride by which most of his order were characterized, and that he is to be regarded, not merely as an individual, but as a personification of what has once before in this history been called Patricianism. This being premised, it may be safely read that there was once a man in Rome so brave in arms that the name he commonly bore was taken from a captured city,25 who was said to have fought against Tarquin, by the Regillus, and to

24 See Niebuhr's History, Vol. engaged in war, separately from its II. pp. 51 et seq., 114. confederates. See the explanation in note 16 to Chap. XI. of Arnold's History.

25 Corioli, which, however, was one of the Latin towns at peace

with Rome. It may, indeed, have

have borne the brunt of many a later conflict. The hero carried the same spirit to which he owed his renown in war into his manner and policy in times. of peace; 26 baffling the Tribunes in every exercise they ventured of their authority, and opposing the desires of the lower estate, whether right or wrong, because the Plebeians deserved to have no wishes of their own. So wild was his animosity, that, on seeking the consulship, he was rejected by the Centuries, in which the votes of the higher classes predominated, as if the majority of the Patricians, however anxious to maintain their own inviolability, were nevertheless aware that the Plebeians had better be taught to look up to them as their protectors than hate them as their oppressors. Angered by his repulse at the elections, Coriolanus put forth all his energy, as it appears, to rouse the more violent men amongst his order to resume the attitude in which they had long stood exulting over their prostrate fellow-citizens. A famine occurred, so general and so alarming that it was necessary to seek supplies from foreign nations; and when they arrived, to feed, as was supposed, the starving poor, Coriolanus is reported to have addressed the Senate in this wise: -"If yonder rabble will have the grain they need, let them restore to us our ancient authority. Am I, who could not brook a king, to bear with a Tribune, a Triton of the minnows?

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Let them secede again;

Even with the same austerity and garb

As he controlled the war."

Shaks., Coriol., IV. 7.

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