"The furies of thy brother With me and mine abide, From heaven comes down the flame, Full on the neck of Titus The blade of Aulus came: In a wide arch and tall, Of some rich Capuan's hall. Were loosened with dismay And Aulus the Dictator Stroked Auster's raven mane, With heed he looked unto the girths, With heed unto the rein. "Now bear me well, black Auster, And thou and I will have revenge 32. So spake he; and was buckling Tighter black Auster's band, When he was aware of a princely pair Did such rare armour gleam; And all who saw them trembled, Scarce gathered voice to speak. 34. By many names men call us; Is hung each morn with flowers: Is our dear native home; And for the right we come to fight Before the ranks of Rome." 35. No answered those strange horsemen, And each couched low his spear; And forthwith all the ranks of Rome Were bold, and of good cheer: And on the thirty armies Came wonder and affright, And Ardea wavered on the left, And Cora on the right. "Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus; "The foe begins to yield! Charge for the hearth of Vesta! Charge for the Golden Shield! Let no man stop to plunder, But slay, and slay, and slay: The gods who live forever Are on our side to-day." 36. Then the fierce trumpet-flourish The kites know well the long stern swel So comes the Po in flood-time Upon the Celtic plain: So comes the squall, blacker than night, It was a goodly sight To see the thirty standards When the black squall doth blow, And fast Circeium fled. Threw shield and spear away. Amidst the mud and gore, The banner of proud Tusculum, That never stooped before: And down went Flavius Faustus, Who led his stately ranks From where the apple blossoms wave On Anio's echoing banks, And Tullus of Arpinum, Chief of the Volscian aids, The great Arician seer The hunter of the deer Felt the good Roman steel, Were mingled in a mass; Sempronius Atratinus Sate in the Eastern Gate. Each in his chair of state; Was no such Pontiff found. And all around the portal, And maids with faces pale. Of horse-hoofs from the east. The sun was hastening down, When he was aware of a princely pair 38. "Hail to the great Asylum! Hail to the hill-tops seven! Hail to the fire that burns for aye, And the shield that fell from heaven! This day, by Lake Regillus, Under the Porcian height, All in the lands of Tusculum Was fought a glorious fight. To-morrow your Dictator Shall bring in triumph home The spoils of thirty cities To deck the shrines of Rome!" 39. Then burst from that great concourse And some ran north, and some ran south, But on rode these strange horsemen, And none who saw their bearing While laurel-boughs and flowers, From housetops and from windows, Fell on their crests in showers. When they drew nigh to Vesta, They vaulted down amain, And washed their horses in the well 40. And all the people trembled, Alone found voice to speak: "The Gods who live forever Have fought for Rome to-day! These be the Great Twin Brethren To whom the Dorians pray. Back comes the Chief in triumph, Who, in the hour of fight, Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren Through billows and through gales Wherefore they rode to Vesta's door, Marked evermore with white, Be hung with garlands all, With joyous trumpet-sound, And each with olive crowned; And pass in solemn order Before the sacred dome, Where dwell the Great Twin Brethren Who fought so well for Rome." VIRGINIA. of the Patrician money-lenders. Children often became slaves in consequence of the misfor tunes of their parents. The debtor was impriimpartial public functionaries, but in a private workhouse belonging to the creditor. Frightful stories were told respecting these dungeons. It was said that torture and brutal violation were common; that tight stocks, heavy chains, scanty measures of food, were used to punish wretches guilty of nothing but poverty; and that brave soldiers, whose breasts were covered with honourable scars, were often mark A COLLECTION Consisting exclusively of warsongs would give an imperfect, or rather an erroneous notion of the spirit of the old Latin ballads. The Patricians, during about a cen-soned, not in a public jail under the care of tury and a half after the expulsion of the kings, held all the high military commands. A Plebeian, even though, like Lucius Siccius, he were distinguished by his valour and knowledge of war, could serve only in subordinate posts. A minstrel, therefore, who wished to celebrate the early triumphs of his country, could hardly take any but Patricians for his heroes. The warriors who are mentioned in the two preceding lays, Horatius, Lartius, Her-ed still more deeply on the back by the scourges minius, Aulus Posthumius, Æbutius Elva, Sempronius Atratinus, Valerius Poplicola, were all members of the dominant order; and a poet who was singing their praises, whatever his own political opinions might be, would naturally abstain from insulting the class to which they belonged, and from reflecting on the system which had placed such men at the head of the legions of the commonwealth. of high-born usurers. The Plebeians were, however, not wholly without constitutional rights. From an early period they had been admitted to some share of political power. They were enrolled in the centuries, and were allowed a share, considerable though not proportioned to their numerical strength, in the disposal of those high dignities from which they were themselves excluded. Thus their position bore some resemblance to that of the Irish Catholics during the interval between the year 1792 and the year 1829. The | Plebeians had also the privilege of annually appointing officers, named Tribunes, who had no active share in the government of the Commonwealth, but who, by degrees, acquired a power which made them formidable even to the ablest and most resolute Consuls and Dictators. The person of the Tribune was inviola ble; and, though he could directly effect little, he could obstruct every thing. But there was a class of compositions in which the great families were by no means so courteously treated. No parts of early Roman | history are richer with poetical colouring than those which relate to the long contest between the privileged houses and the commonalty. The population of Rome was, from a very early period, divided into hereditary castes, which, indeed, readily united to repel foreign enemies, but which regarded each other, during many years, with bitter animosity. Between those castes there was a barrier hardly less strong than that which, at Venice, parted the mem- During more than a century after the institubers of the Great Council from their country- tion of the Tribuneship, the Commons strugmen. In some respects inde d, the line which gled manfully for the removal of grievances separated an Icilius or a Duilius from a Post- under which they laboured; and, in spite of humius or a Fabius was even more deeply many checks and reverses, succeeded in marked than that which separated the rower wringing concession after concession from the of a gondola from a Contarini or a Morosini. stubborn aristocracy. At length, in the year At Venice the distinction was merely civil. At of the city 378, both parties mustered their Rome it was both civil and religious. Among whole strength for their last and most desperate the grievances under which the Plebeians suf- conflict. The popular and active Tribune, fered, three were felt as peculiarly severe. Caius Licinius, proposed the three memorable They were excluded from the highest magis-laws which are called by his name, and which tracies; they were excluded from all share in the public lands; and they were ground down to the dust by partial and barbarous legislation touching pecuniary contracts. The ruling class in Rome was a moneyed class; and it made and administered the laws with a view solely to its own interest. Thus the relation between lender and borrower was mixed up with the relation between sovereign and sub ject. The great men held a large portion of the community in dependence by means of advances at enormous usury. The law of debt, framed by creditors, and for the protection of creditors, was the most horrible that has ever been known among men. The liberty, and even the life, of the insolvent were at the mercy | were intended to redress the three great evils of which the Plebeians complained. He was supported, with eminent ability and firmness, by his colleague, Lucius Sextius. The struggle appears to have been the fiercest that ever in any community terminated without an appeal to arms. If such a contest had raged in any Greek city, the streets would have run with blood. But, even in the paroxysms of faction, the Roman retained his gravity, his respect for law, and his tenderness for the lives of his fellow-citizens. Year after year Licinius and Sextius were re-elected Tribunes. Year after year, if the narrative which has come down to us is to be trusted, they continued to exert, to the full extent, their power of stopping Those minstrels, as Niebuhr has remarked, appear to have generally taken the popular side. We can hardly be mistaken in suppos ing that, at the great crisis of the civil conflict, they employed themselves in versifying all the most powerful and virulent speeches of the Tribunes, and in heaping abuse on the chiefs of the aristocracy. Every personal defect, every domestic scandal, every tradition dishonourable to a noble house, would be sought the whole machine of government. No curule | truth, naturally from the constitution of the magistrates could be chosen; no military mus- Roman government and from the spirit of the ter could be held. We know too little of the Roman people; and, though it submitted to state of Rome in those days to be able to con- metrical rules derived from Greece, it retained jecture how, during that long anarchy, the to the last its essentially Roman character. Lupeace was kept, and ordinary justice adminis- cilius was the earliest satirist whose works tered between man and man. The animosity were held in esteem under the Cæsars. But, of both parties rose to the greatest height. The many years before Lucilius was born, Nævius excitement, we may well suppose, would have had been flung into a dungeon, and guarded been peculiarly intense at the annual election there with circumstances of unusual rigour of Tribunes. On such occasions there can be till the Tribunes interfered in his behalf, on little doubt that the great families did all that account of the bitter lines in which he had atcould be done, by threats and caresses, to tacked the great Cæcilian family.* The gebreak the union of the Plebeians. That union, nius and spirit of the Roman satirists survived however, proved indissoluble. At length the the liberties of their country, and were not exgood cause triumphed. The Licinian laws tinguished by the cruel despotism of the Julian were carried. Lucius Sextius was the first and Flavian emperors. The great poet who Plebeian Consul, Caius Licinius the third. told the story of Domitian's turbot was the The results of this great change were singu- legitimate successor of those forgotten minlarly happy and glorious. Two centuries of strels whose songs animated the factions of prosperity, harmony, and victory followed the the infant Republic. reconciliation of the orders. Men who remembered Rome engaged in waging petty wars almost within sight of the Capitol lived to see her the mistress of Italy. While the disabilities of the Plebeians continued, she was scarcely able to maintain her ground against the Volscians and Hernicans. When those disabilities were removed, she rapidly became more than a match for Carthage and Macedon. During the great Licinian contest the Fie-out, brought into notice, and exaggerated. The beian poets were, doubtless, not silent. Even illustrious head of the aristocratical party, in modern times songs have been by no means Marcus Furius Camillus, might perhaps be, in without influence on public affairs; and we some measure, protected by his venerable age may therefore infer, that, in a society where and by the memory of his great services to the printing was unknown, and where books were state. But Appius Claudius Crassus enjoyed rare, a pathetic or humorous party-ballad no such immunity. He was descended from must have produced effects such as we can a long line of ancestors distinguished by their but faintly conceive. It is certain that satiri- haughty demeanour, and by the inflexibility cal poems were common at Rome from a very with which they had withstood all the demands early period. The rustics who lived at a dis- of the Plebeian order. While the political con tance from the seat of government, and took duct and the deportment of the Claudian nolittle part in the strife of factions, gave vent to bles drew upon them the fiercest public hatred, their petty local animosities in coarse Fescen- they were wanting, if any credit is due to the nine verse. The lampoons of the city were early history of Rome, in a class of qualities doubtless of a higher order; and their sting which, in a military Commonwealth, is suffiwas early felt by the nobility. For in the cient to cover a multitude of ffences. Several Twelve Tables, long before the time of the of them appear to have been eloquent, versed Licinian laws, a severe punishment was de- in civil business, and learned after the fashion nounced against the citizen who should com- of their age; but in war they were not distin. pose or recite verses reflecting on another.*guished by skill or valour. Some of them, as Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin poets, whose works have come down to us, were not mere imitators of foreign models; and it is therefore the only sort of composition in which they had never been rivalled. It was not, like their tragedy, their comedy, their epic and lyric poetry, a hot-house plant which, in return for assiduous and skilful culture, yielded only scanty and sickly fruits. It was hardy, and full of sap; and in all the various juices which it yielded might be distinguished the flavour of the Ausonian soil. "Satire," said Quintilian, with just pride, "is all our own." It sprang, in * Cicero justly infers from this law that there had been early Latin poets whose works had been lost before his time. "Quamquam id quidem etiam xii tabule declarant; condi jam tum solitum esse carmen, quod ne liceret fleri ad alterius injuriam lege sanxerunt."Tusc. iv. 2. if conscious where their weakness lay, had, * Plautus, Miles Gloriosus. Aulus Gellius iii 3 great agitators. He would naturally, there- | Tribuneship was re-established; and Appíus fore, be the favourite mark of the Plebeian escaped the hands of the executioner only by satirists; nor would they have been at a loss a voluntary death. to find a point on which he was open to attack. His grandfather, named like himself, Appius Claudius, had left a name as much detested as that of Sextus Tarquinius. He had been Consul more than seventy years before the introduction of the Licinian laws. By availing himself of a singular crisis in public feeling, he had obtained the consent of the Commons to the abolition of the Tribuneship, and had been the chief of that Council of Ten to which the whole direction of the State had been committed. In a few months his administration had become universally odious. It was swept away by an irresistible outbreak of popular fury; and its memory was still held in abhorrence by the whole city. The immediate cause of the downfall of this execrable government was said to have been an attempt made by Appius Claudius on the chastity of a beautiful young girl of humble birth. The story | ran, that the Decemvir, unable to succeed by bribes and solicitations, resorted to an outrageous act of tyranny. A vile dependant of the Claudian house laid claim to the damsel as his slave. The cause was brought before the tribunal of Appius. The wicked magistrate, in defiance of the clearest proofs, gave judgment for the claimant; but the girl's father, a brave soldier, saved her from servitude and dishonour by stabbing her to the heart in the sight the whole Forum. That blow was the signal for a general explosion. Camp and city rose at once; the Ten were pulled down; the It can hardly be doubted that a story so admirably adapted to the purposes both of the poet and of the demagogue would be eagerly seized upon by minstrels burning with hatred against the Patrician order, against the Clau dian house, and especially against the grandson and namesake of the infamous Decemvir. In order that the reader may judge fairly of these fragments of the lay of Virginia, he must imagine himself a Plebeian who has just voted for the re-election of Sextius and Licinius. All the power of the Patricians has been exerted to throw out the two great champions of the Commons. Every Posthumius, Æmilius, and Cornelius has used his influence to the utmost. Debtors have been let out of the workhouses on condition of voting against the men of the people; clients have been posted to hiss and interrupt the favourite candidates; Appius Claudius Crassus has spoken with more than his usual eloquence and asperity; all has been in vain; Licinius and Sextus have a fifth time carried all the tribes; work is suspended; the booths are closed; the Plebeians bear on their shoulders the two champions of liberty through the Forum. Just at this moment it is an nounced that a popular poet, a zealous adherent of the Tribunes, has made a new song which will cut the Claudian family to the heart. The crowd gathers round him, and calls on him to recite it. He takes his stand on the spot where, according to tradition, Virginia, mōre than seventy years ago, was seized by the pander of Appius, and he begins his story. VIRGINIA. FRAGMENTS OF A LAY SUNG IN THE FORUM ON THE DAY WHEREON LUCIUS SEXTIUS SEXTINUS LATERANUS AND CAIUS LICINIUS CALVUS STOLO WERE ELECTED TRIBUNES OF THE COMMONS THE FIFTH TIME, IN THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLXXXII. YE good men of the Commons, with loving hearts and true, Of maids with snaky tresses, or sailors turned to swine. Here, in this very Forum, under the noonday sun, In sight of all the people, the bloody deed was done. Old men still creep among us who saw that fearful day, Just seventy years and seven ago, when the wicked Ten bare sway. Of all the wicked Ten still the names are held accursed, The townsmen shrank to right and left, and eyed askance with fear |