72. THE TWELVE TABLES In all struggles of the people against the tyranny of the ruling class the demand for written laws is one of the first measures taken by the people for the protection of their persons and property. So the plebeians demanded that a code of laws be drawn up, and in spite of the stubborn resistance of the patricians, a commission was sent to the Greek cities of southern Italy and to Athens to study Greek laws and customs. Upon the return of this embassy, a commission of ten magistrates was appointed to frame a code of laws. These laws were graven on twelve tables of bronze, which were fastened to the rostra or orator's platform in the Forum, where they might be seen and read by all. These "Laws of the Twelve Tables" formed the basis of all legislation for many centuries and constituted a part of the education of the Roman youthevery schoolboy being required to learn them by heart. Myers 73. SECESSION OF THE TIBICINES The guild of pipers, in high repute since Numa's time, was accustomed every year at the feast of Minerva to hold a banquet in the temple of Juppiter and then with masks and women's dress to parade the town. The stern censor Appius Claudius thought proper to forbid this privilege. Thereupon the guild of pipers decided to leave Rome and betook themselves to the neighboring city of Tibur. Great anxiety seized all the people and the senate was obliged to invite the exasperated musicians to return to Rome. But these felt that they had the advantage and remained in Tibur. Thereupon the Tiburtines, wishing to oblige their Roman friends, hit upon a ruse. On a certain evening they invited all the pipers to different houses and gave them so much wine that they were soon fit to be packed into wagons and conveyed back to Rome. When they awoke next morning and found that they had been outwitted, they consented to remain in Rome, but only under guarantee of their old privilege. 74. VIRGIL The influence of Virgil on the world has been greater than that of any poet of antiquity, of any uninspired writer except perhaps Aristotle. No one else has won such an enduring and complete dominion over the human spirit; and Aristotle's triumph pales beside that of Virgil. Aristotle draws after his chariot the student, the philosopher, the divine; Virgil has the lover, the warrior, the statesman. The same man of whom his friend Horace said that earth never bore a fairer soul than his, of whose forthcoming epic Propertius predicted that it would surpass the Iliad-the same man was the model for the style of the greatest of historians and afforded to St. Augustine an example of the highest bloom of Pagan art. He peers out at us from the gloom of the Middle Ages as the most potent of the magicians. gil?" is the simple homage of 66 Art thou that Vir his greatest Italian rival in the poet's art, the bearer of the light of Virgil's fame from the Ancient to the Modern World. Quart. Rev. No. 337 75. TO Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS In what manner of Paradise are we to conceive that you, Horace, are dwelling, or what region of immortality can give you such pleasures as this life afforded? The country and the town, nature and men, who knew them so well as you or who ever so wisely made the best of those two worlds? Truly here you had good things, nor do you ever, in all your poems, look for more delight in the life beyond; you never expect consolation for present sorrow and when you once have shaken hands with a friend the parting seems to you eternal. You could not tell Maecenas that you would meet him again; you could only promise to tread the dark path with him. You, Horace, loved the lesson of the roses, and now and again would speak somewhat like a death's head over thy temperate cups of Sabine ordinaire. Your melancholy moral was but meant to heighten the joy of thy pleasant life, when wearied Italy, after all her wars and civic bloodshed, had won a peaceful haven. |