left unharmed; and the story has a remarkable resemblance to a former story relating to the same person; with this important difference, indeed, that the treachery of the former general was unsuccessful.(209)

With regard to the story of Virginia, the first remark which naturally suggests itself is, that if the power of Appius under the second decemvirate had been such as it is described by our historians: if neither the life nor the property of any plebeian was safe; if confiscation of goods, rapes of married and unmarried women, violences to youths, beatings of freemen, expulsions from the city, were the order of the day;(210) if Rome exhibited the spectacle of a town taken in war, and sacked by a ruthless conqueror; if this open contempt of law, if this Oriental licence of oppression, prevailed, it is difficult to understand why Appius should have resorted to the circuitous method of a false witness, a mock trial, and an unjust judgment in public, in order to gain possession of a plebeian girl of fifteen. If so many deeds of open violence to women had been committed with impunity by the satellites of the tyranny, it is difficult to understand why the

(209) Above, p. 187-192.

(210) τοῖς θρασυτάτοις τῶν νέων, οἷς εἶχον ἕκαστοι περὶ αὐτοὺς, ἔφηκαν ἄγειν καὶ φέρειν τὰ τῶν ἐναντιουμένων τῇ πολιτείᾳ, οἱ δ ̓, ὥσπερ ἁλούσης πολέμῳ κατὰ κράτος τῆς πατρίδος, οὐ τὰ χρήματα μόνον ἀφηροῦντο τοὺς νόμῳ κτησαμέν νους, ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς τὰς γαμετὰς τὰς εὐμόρφους παρηνόμουν, καὶ εἰς θυγατέρας ἐπιγάμους καθύβριζον, καὶ πληγὰς τοῖς ἀγανακτούσιν, ὥσπερ ἀνδραπόδοις, ἐδίδοσαν, Dion Hal. xi. 2. Lower down, C. Claudius, addressing the decemvirs, before the case of Virginia, says of the middle class of citizens: xonμáτwv ἀδίκους ἁρπαγὰς ἐγκαλοῦσιν ὑμῖν, καὶ προπηλακισμοὺς εἰς γαμετὰς ὀδύρονται γυναῖκας, καὶ παροινίας εἰς θυγατέρας ἐπιγάμους, καὶ ἄλλας ὕβρεις πολλὰς καὶ xaλemás, c. 10. Virginius afterwards expatiates in the camp on the enormities of the decemvirs, among which he enumerates γυναικῶν ὕβρεις, καὶ παρθένων ἐπιγάμων ἁρπαγάς, καὶ παίδων ἐλευθέρων προπηλακισμούς, ε. 40. Livy gives a similar account of a reign of terror, though he does not specially mention the violence to women: Aliquandiu æquatus inter omnes terror fuit; paullatim totus vertere in plebem coepit. Abstinebatur a patribus; in humiliores libidinose crudeliterque consulebatur;' c. 36. Hi patricii juvenes] ferre, agere plebem plebisque res-et jam ne tergo quidem abstinebatur: virgis cædi, alii securi subjici; et, ne gratuita crudelitas esset, bonorum donatio sequi domini supplicium;' ib. c. 37. On the other hand, Livy represents the consul Valerius, in the first campaign after the decemvirate, thus exhorting his soldiers: Unam Virginiam fuisse, cujus pudicitiæ in pace periculum esset; unum Appium civem periculosa libidinis; at si fortuna belli inclinet, omnium liberis ab tot millibus hostium periculum fore;' iii. 61. This argument implies that no such system of violating women as that described by Dionysius existed under the decemvirate.

chief tyrant should find it necessary to have recourse to stratagem and fraud. By the course which he adopts, he exposes himself to impassioned remonstrance, and even to the resistance of the bystanders; he is compelled, by the fear of provoking the people, to withdraw his judgment on the first day, and to allow Virginia to remain in the hands of her family until a more formal hearing of the case can be had. Why did he not murder Virginius, who was in the camp at Algidus, as he had murdered Siccius in the camp at Fidena? Why were not Numitorius and Icilius driven out of the city, or made fast in a dungeon? Deprived of her natural protectors, Virginia would have been at the mercy of the powerful decemvir. The deference which Appius pays to forms of law, the publicity of the trial, the permission accorded to the defenders of Virginia to argue in her behalf, and to protest against the unjust judgment; the revocation of the first decree after it has been publicly pronounced, and the postponement of the final sentence until the second day, all appear to be inconsistent with the despotic character of his rule, and with the general course of government attributed to him :(211) a proceeding more like that of a Turkish pasha, who wished to add the fair daughter of a Greek rayah to his harem, might have been expected; or if there was a trial, a judicial inquiry as summary as would now take place before a Neapolitan military commission, in the case of a prisoner charged with a state offence.

The attitude and language of Virginius when he stabs his daughter, and his rapid ride to the camp, where he brandishes the fatal knife in the presence of his fellow-soldiers, and appears before them stained with the blood of the victim of the decemvir's lust-are circumstances, as they are related to us, romantic,

(211) The interpretation of vindicia in Livy, supported by Niebuhr and Dr. Arnold, and the supposition that the decision of Appius against the liberty of Virginia was not final, increase the improbability of the story. All strict observance of legal forms, and all delays of justice, are unsuited to the occasion and the person. See above, p. 209, n. 127, where this hypothesis is stated and examined.

and not very probable. (212) What is however most material for us to remark, is the minute and detailed character of the narrative from the first seizure of Virginius by M. Claudius, to the insurrection of the army, and their march to the Aventine. The circumstances are related by both our historians(13) with the minuteness of a memoir writer, who, if not an eye-witness of the transactions, was present in Rome at the time, and collected his information from persons who had seen and heard all that passed. If we suppose the extant accounts to have this origin, it then becomes important to note such discrepancies as the statement of Dionysius that Virginia had a full trial, with witnesses examined in her defence, on the second day; whereas Livy says that Appius would hear neither party and the statement of Livy that he could not ascertain the reasons really assigned by Appius for his judgment; whereas Dionysius says that he rested it upon his own personal knowledge of the fact that Virginia was the child of the slave-woman of M. Claudius. Such discre

(212) Levesque, Hist. Crit. de la Rep. Rom. tom. i. p. 185-6, thinks it an improbable circumstance in the story that a young plebeian girl should be represented as frequenting a school, at a time when writing was rare. We are not told that she was taught to write: she might only have learnt to read. Attendance on a public school seems better suited to a plebeian than to a patrician girl; the latter would probably receive her instruction at home. Virginius is a respectable citizen of the middle class; Livy says of him: honestum ordinem in Algido ducebat, vir exempli recti domi militiæque.' Diodorus describes Appius as partiç evyevoUS πаρléνoν πενxção, xii. 24. In the lately discovered fragments of the 12th book of Dionysius, Mælius is described, when pursued by the knights, as running into a butcher's shop, and seizing a butcher's knife, with which he defends himself: καταλαμβανόμενος δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἱππέων εἰς ἐργαστήριον εἰστρέχει μαγειρικὸν, καὶ κοπίδα τῶν κρεοκόπων ἁρπάσας παίει τὸν πρῶτον αὐτῷ Tроaε 0óvra, Fragm. Hist. Gr. vol. ii. p. xxxv. ed. Didot. The expression, toyаoтhotov μаytpukov, is also used by Dionysius in xi. 37. A patrician Virginia is mentioned in Livy, x. 23.

(213) ἀφικνεῖται περὶ λύχνων ἀφὰς ἐπὶ τὸν πρὸς ̓Αλγίδῳ χάρακα, τοιοῦτος οἷος ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐξέδραμεν, αἵματι πεφυρμένος ἅπας, καὶ τὴν μαγειρικὴν μάχαιραν διὰ χειρὸς ἔχων. Dion. Hal. xi. 40. Strictum etiam telum, respersusque ipse cruore, tota in se castra convertit; Livy, iii. 50. Pomponius says: Recens a cæde, madensque adhuc filiæ cruore, ad commilitones confugit;' Dig. i. 2, 2, § 24. The distance of Algidus from Rome is above twenty miles. Distance however in this story, as in the account of the nocturnal ride of S. Tarquin and his friends from Gabii to Rome, seems to be of no account. See above, vol. i. p. 516, n. 132. It will be observed that Dionysius marks the precise time of the day at which Virginius reaches the camp; viz., at nightfall.

pancies as these are greater than the discrepancy with respect to the execution of the Marquis of Argyle in the year 1661, which is cited by Paley as an instance of a disagreement of testimony in modern history. In this case the Scotch authorities concur in the account that he was executed by decapitation, and that the sentence was carried into effect forty-eight hours after his trial, whereas Lord Clarendon says that he was hanged on the day of his trial.(214) In the modern instance, moreover, we know the names of the witnesses, and can estimate their means of information. Hence we are able to judge of the comparative weight of their testimony; and thus to perceive that the native witnesses reported the facts correctly; but that Lord Clarendon, writing at a distance both in space and time, committed an error. In the conflicting accounts of the trial of Virginia, however, we have no such means of judgment. We do not know who the witnesses for these respective stories are; we are not informed whether they, or either of them, lived at or near the time; or, if they lived long after the time, who first composed these detailed narratives; and we have no means of estimating the comparative weight of their testimony.

Our difficulties however do not end here; for not only are we unable to discover whether the authors of this story lived at or near the time, but all our accounts lead to the conclusion that they must have lived long after the time. We know that the earliest native historians were as late as the Second Punic War; Livy tells us, moreover, that writing was little practised before the burning of the city, and that the few memorials which existed in public or private repositories at that time perished for the most part in the conflagration. We may suppose that the names of the two sets of decemvirs were preserved in contemporary official registers; we may perhaps make the same supposition respecting the three commissioners to Athens, and the three ambassadors sent by the Senate to treat with the army

(214) See the author's Treatise on Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics; vol. i. p. 321.

on the Aventine. (915) Some other facts of a similar nature may have been recorded by the pontifical scribes, and preserved in the state annals. But between such dry notices as these, and the narrative of the fall of the decemvirate, as it is presented by our historians, the interval is as wide as that between a bare skeleton and a body of flesh and blood. Taking the facts respecting the early Roman history as they are known to us, we must either suppose that Fabius Pictor and some of his successors were gifted with historical second-sight, or that the account of the trial of Virginia and the overthrow of the decemvirs is rather a historical romance than a history. If we could suppose that Herodotus, who migrated to Thurii in 443 B.C., only a few years after the decemvirate, had afterwards perambulated the Italian states, and had extended his travels to Rome; that, struck by the military efficiency of the people, or by the peculiarities of their political institutions, he had inquired into their recent history, and had caused the barbarous language of his informant to be interpreted into his own Hellenic tongue; and that he had been told a story of a revolution, fresh in the recollections and thoughts of the people, brought about by a tyrant who had driven a father to take away the life of his own daughter in order to save her honour; he might perhaps have been tempted to add another episode to his immortal history, in order to celebrate this striking event. Had the story been recorded under such circumstances by Herodotus, we should believe it, with the same well-grounded assurance of its truth as that which we have for believing his accounts of the battles of Thermopyla and Platea. Or even if Plato, in one of his three visits to Sicily (all of which were after the burning of the city), (216) had extended his travels to Cumæ, and had afterwards journeyed on to see the town near the great sea which rumour reported to have been recently taken by an army from the Hyperboreans,(217) he might

(215) Livy, iii. 50.

See Clinton, ad Ann.

(216) Plato's first visit to Sicily was in 389 B.C. (217) Plut. Cam. 22. Heraclides Ponticus was a disciple of Plato, and is said to have taken charge of his school during one of his visits to Sicily. Diog. Laert. v. § 86. Suidas in 'Hpakλeidŋs. See above, vol. i. p. 59.

VOL. II.

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