justice administered between man and man. The animosity of both

parties rose to the greatest height. The excitement, we may well
suppose, would have been peculiarlyintense at the annual

election of Tribunes. On such occasions there can be little doubt
that the great families did all that could be done, by threats

and caresses, to break the union of the Plebeians. That union,
however, proved indissoluble. At length the good cause triumphed.

The Licinian laws were carried. Lucius Sextius was the first
Plebeian Consul, Caius Licinius the third.

The results of this great change were singularly happy and
glorious. Two centuries of prosperity, harmony, and victory

followed the 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 Plebeian poets were,

doubtless, not silent. Even in modern times songs have been by no
means without influence on public affairs; and we may therefore

infer that, in a society where printing was unknown and where
books were rare, a pathetic or humorous party-ballad must have

produced effects such as we can but faintlyconceive. It is
certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very

early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat
of government, and took little part in the strife of factions,

gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine
verse. The lampoons of the city were doubtless of a higher order;

and their sting was early felt by the nobility. For in the Twelve
Tables, long before the time of the Licinian laws, a severe

punishment was denounced against the citizen who should compose
or recite verses reflecting on another. 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
have never been rivalled. It was not, like their tragedy, their

comedy, their epic and lyric poetry, a hothouse plant which, in
return for assiduous and skilful culture, gave 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 flavor

of the Ausonian soil. ``Satire,'' said Quinctilian, with just
pride, ``is all our own.'' Satire sprang, in truth, naturally

from the constitution of the Roman government and from the spirit
of the Roman people; and, though at length subjected to metrical

rules derived from Greece, retained to the last an essentially
Roman character. Lucilius was the earliest satirist whose works

were held in esteem under the Caesars. But many years before
Lucilius was born, N锟絭ius had been flung into a dungeon, and

guarded there with circumstances of unusual rigor, on account of
the bitter lines in which he had attacked the great Caecilian

family. The genius and spirit of the Roman satirists survived the
liberty of their country, and were not extinguished by the cruel

despotism of the Julian and Flavian Emperors. The great poet who
told the story of Domitian's turbot was the legitimate successor

of those forgotten minstrels whose songs animated the factions of
the infant Republic.

Those minstrels, as Niebuhr has remarked, appear to have
generally taken the popular side. We can hardly be mistaken in

supposing 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
leaders of the aristocracy. Every personal defect, every domestic

scandal, every tradition dishonorable to a noble house, would be
sought out, brought into notice, and exaggerated. The illustrious

head of the aristocratical party, Marcus Furius Camillus, might
perhaps be, in some measure, protected by his venerable age and

by the memory of his great services to the state. But Appius
Claudius Crassus enjoyed no such immunity. He was descended from

a long line of ancestors distinguished by their haughty demeanor,
and by the inflexibility with which they had withstood all the

demands of the Plebeian order. While the political conduct and
the deportment of the Claudian nobles drew upon them the fiercest

public hatred, they were accused of wanting, if any credit is due
to the early history of Rome, a class of qualities which, in a

military commonwealth, is sufficient to cover a multitude of
offences. The chiefs of the family appear to have been eloquent,

versed in civil business, and learned after the fashion of their
age; but in war they were not distinguished by skill or valor.

Some of them, as if conscious where their weakness lay, had, when
filling the highest magistracies, taken internaladministration

as their department of public business, and left the military
command to their colleagues. One of them had been entrusted with

an army, and had failed ignominiously. None of them had been
honored with a triumph. None of them had achieved any martial

exploit, such as those by which Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus,
Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, and, above

all, the great Camillus, had extorted the reluctantesteem of the
multitude. During the Licinian conflict, Appius Claudius Crassus

signalized himself by the ability and severity with which he
harangued against the two great agitators. He would naturally,

therefore, be the favorite mark of the Plebeian satirists; nor
would they have been at a loss to find a point on which he was

open to attack.
His grandfather, called, like himself, Appius Claudius, had left

a name as much detested as that Sextus Tarquinius. This elder
Appius 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 new months his administration had
become universallyodious. It had been 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 upon 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 dependent 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
dishonor by stabbing her to the heart in the sight of the whole

Forum. That blow was the signal for a general explosion. Camp and
city rose at once; the Ten were pulled down; the Tribuneship was

re锟絪tablished; and Appius escaped the hands of the executioner
only by a voluntary death.

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 Claudian 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锟絣ection 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, 锟絤ilius, 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
favorite candidates; Appius Claudius Crassus has spoken with more

than his usual eloquence and asperity: all has been in vain,
Licinius and Sextius 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 announced that a great poet, a zealous