wealth. Cassius was the first proposer of it, and it cost him his life. His office of consul was no sooner at an end, than he was solemnly accused of aspiring at royalty; and by sentence of the popular assembly, he was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, the usual punishment of treason. Soon afterward, Menius, one of the tribunes, brought on the consideration of the .aw. He called on the consuls to nominate the decemviri; and on their refusal, he opposed the levies which the consuls had ordered to be made on account of a war with the Equi and Volsci. The consuls adopted a very violent procedure: they quitted the city, and established their tribunal without the jurisdiction of the tribunes. Thither they summoned the people to attend them, and to give up their names to be enrolled. They refused to obey; on which the consuls ordered their lands to be ravaged, and their flocks carried off. This had its desired effect; but so violent a measure was never again attempted. A more sure and less dangerous expedient was afterward followed, which was, to divide the tribunes. tribune could, by his veto, oppose or suspend any decree; but if another opposed him, the veto was of no effect. Icilius, one of the tribunes, having opposed the forming of the levies, his four colleagues, gained over by the senate, took the opposite side; and it was therefore agreed that the consideration of the agrarian law should be postponed till the termination of the

war.

One

When that period arrived, the contest was again renewed. The tribunes brought on the consideration of the law; they demanded why the last consuls had not named decemviri; and they even pretended to call them to account and to punish them for this omission. Genucius, a tribune, summoned the consuls of the current year to execute the decree which had been so long neglected. They refused, on pretence that a decree of the senate, when not executed by those con suls to whom it was directed, was held to be abroga

ted. Genucius then summoned the consuls of the preceding year to answer for their conduct, and vowed, as is said, that he would prosecute them to his latest breath. They took care that he should keep his word, for the next day he was found dead in his bed. The people were made to regard this as a judgment of the gods, who thus expressed their disapprobation of the schemes of this factious tribune; and his colleagues were intimidated for some time from prosecuting his views, not less, perhaps, from the apprehension of human than of divine vengeance.

The consuls and senate trusting to the effect of this example, assumed a more rigid authority, and the levies were made with severe exactness. Among those whom the consuls had enrolled as a common soldier, was a man named Volero, who in a former campaign, had been a centurion, and was esteemed a good officer. He complained of the injustice done him in thus degrading him, and refused to obey. The consuls ordered him to be scourged, from which sentence he ap pealed to the people. One of the consular lictors endeavouring to arrest him was beaten off; and the people, tumultuously taking his part, broke the fasces and drove the consuls out of the forum. The senate was immediately assembled, and the consuls, demanded that Volero should be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. The people, on the other hand, called for justice against the consuls for a breach of the Valerian law, in disregarding Volero's appeal to the people; and the contest lasted till the election of the annual magistrates, when Volero was chosen one of the tribunes. The person of a tribune was sacred, and that of a consul, when out of office, was not so; but Volero did not choose to limit his vengeance to the two consuls: the whole senate was the object of his resentment, and he resolved to strike a blow which they should never

recover.

The election of the tribunes of the people had hitherto been held in the comitia curiata. Volero urged

that as these comitia could not be summoned but by a decree of the senate, that body might, on various pretences, postpone or refuse to summon them; that the previous ceremony of consulting the auspices was necessary, and these, the priests, who were the augurs, could interpret in any manner they chose; and that, lastly, it was always held necessary that whatever was done in those assemblies should be confirmed by a decree of the senate. He represented all these formalities as being nothing else than restrictions imposed by the senate on the popular deliberations-and proposed that henceforth the magistrates of the peoole should be chosen in the comitia called by tribes, which were exempt from all those restraints.

The senate, by throwing difficulties in the way, ound means to retard for some time the passing of a law so fatal to their power; but their opposition was in the main ineffectual; for it passed at last, and with this remarkable addition, that all questions, in which the affairs of the people were agitated, should henceforward be debated in the comitia tributa, where the people gave in their votes by tribes.

This famous law of Volero completed the change in the constitution of the Roman republic. The supreme authority from this time may be considered as having passed from the higher orders into the hands of the people. The consuls continued to preside in the comitia held by centuries; but the tribunes presided in those assemblies in which the most important business of the commonwealth was now transacted. The senate retained, however, a considerable degree of power. They had the disposal of the public money they sent and received ambassadors-made treatiesand their decrees had the force of a law while not annulled by a decree of the people. In a word, this body continued to have respect, and at least the ap pearance of authority, which we shall observe to have yet its effect in frequently restraining the violence of the popular measures. The consuls too, though in

most points of effective power and authority subordinate to the tribunes, had yet in some particulars a vestige of supremacy. They were absolute at the head of the army, and first in command in the civil authority within the city. Their office still carried with it that external show of dignity which commands respect and submission, and which, over the minds of the multitude is frequently attended with the same influence as substantial power.

CHAPTER V.

An Agrarian Law never seriously projected-Decemviri proposed to digest a Code of Laws-Cincinnatus-Appointment of Decemvirs-Laws of the Twelve Tables-Tyranny of the Decemvirs-Infamous conduct of Appius ClaudiusDeath of Virginia--Abolition of the Decemvirate.

THE people having now attained so very considerable an increase of authority, might certainly have prevailed in obtaining the favourite measure of an agrarian law. But the truth is, this measure was nothing more than a political engine, occasionally employed by the popular magistrates for exciting commotions, and weakening the power of the patricians. It was a measure attended necessarily with so much difficulty in the execution, that few even of the people themselves had a sincere desire of seeing it accomplished. The extensive disorder it must have introduced in the territorial possessions oft he citizens, by a new distribution of all the lands acquired by conquest to the republic since the time of Romulus; the affection which even the poorest feel for a small patrimonial inheritance, the place of their nativity, and the repository of the bones of their forefathers; and that most admira ble and most salutary persuasion that it is an act of

impiety to alter or remove ancient landmarks;* all these were such obstacles to the accomplishment of that design, that it could never be seriously expected that the measure would meet with that effectual support which was necessary to carry it into execution.

The tribunes, well aware of those difficulties, and fearing that from too frequent repetition the proposal would become at length so stale as to produce no useful effect, bethought themselves of a new topic to keep alive the spirits of the people, and to foment those dissensions which increased their own power and diminished that of the patricians.

The Romans had at this time no body of civil laws. Those few which they had were only known to the senate and patricians, who interpreted them according to their pleasure, and as best suited their purposes. Under the regal government the kings alone administered justice: the consuls succeeded to this part of the royal prerogative, so that they had in fact the disposal of the fortunes of all the citizens. Terentius or Terentillus, one of the tribunes, in an assembly of the people, after a violent declamation on public grievances of all kinds, and particularly on that dreadful circumstance of the lot of the people, that in all contests with patricians they were sure to suffer, as the latter were both judges and parties, proposed that, in order to remedy this great evil, ten commissioners, or decemviri, should be appointed to frame and digest a new body of laws, for defining and securing the rights of all the different orders-a system of jurisprudence

*The ingenious fable related by Ovid, Fast. lib. ii. v. 667, is a proof of this prevalent belief. The purport is, that when the capitoli was founded in honour of Jupiter, all the other gods consenting to retire and abandon their right in the place, the god Terminus alone refused and kept his post. The moral drawn s, that what Jupiter himself could not remove, should yield to no human will or power.