also of the murder of which he was accused by Volscius; and he conjectures that Volscius did not obtain the surname of Fictor from his having given false evidence, but that false evidence was in after times imputed to him by the historians, merely on account of his name, which meant nothing worse than the potter.(9) A similar view of this narrative is taken by Niebuhr ;(10) who has been followed by Dr. Arnold.(") If Hooke's supposition respecting the cognomen Fictor is adopted, we must assume that the story of the false evidence of Volscius is a legend growing out of a name, similar to the legends of the birth of Servius from a female slave, of Mucius Scævola burning his right hand, of Valerius Corvus and the raven settling on his helmet, of Ahenobarbus and his beard changing colour. On the other hand, if we believe the account of the trials of Kæso Quinctius and Volscius to be historical, we are not entitled to assume that the evidence of Volscius was true-we must either take the statements of our historians, as we receive them; or admit that our knowledge of the events is too obscure and imperfect to justify us in forming any confident opinion on the subject. Still less can we adopt the hypothesis of Niebuhr that Kæso was a party to the subsequent enterprise of Herdonius, and that his death, mentioned by Livy, had in fact taken place at the assault of the Capitol, when he fell by the hands of his countrymen.(12) The patricians at this period, beginning with Coriolanus, to take place in comitia tributa. This is another example to show how indistinct the ideas of the writers in the literary age were respecting the different assemblies in the early period of the republic.

(9) Note to b. ii. c. 23. Compare Figulus, a family cognomen of the Marian gens, and Pictor of the Fabian gens. Fictor occurs in the general sense of a statuary.

(10) Hist. vol. ii. p. 296, 299; Lect. vol. i. p. 182-4. In the latter passage he says: This surname, Fictor, probably from fingere, is one of the examples in which either the name arose from the story or the story from the name; so that the statement the plebeian M. Volscius Fictor was condemned, gave rise to the story that he had given false evidence.' This explanation assumes that Volscius was really condemned for some offence; and differs from Hooke's, which supposes that the story had its origin in the name.

(11) Vol. i. p. 231-9.

(12) It can scarcely be doubted that Kaso was present, and that he perished in this enterprise.' Hist. vol. ii. p. 296. It seems certain that there was evidence of a conspiracy in which Kæso Quinctius was an accom

silence of our historians is conclusive against the possibility of such a report having been known to them: if Kæso had acted the part of Coriolanus on this occasion, and had put himself at the head of the band of slaves and outcasts who are stated to have seized the Capitol, he would have been the most important and remarkable man amongst them; his courage, station, and treason to his country, would have attracted attention, and his death would have been infallibly recorded, as the most remarkable incident in the entire transaction. (13)

plice, and that a promise had been given to Appius Herdonius to make him king of Rome if the undertaking should succeed. It is not impossible that this may rather have been a conspiracy of the gentes minores, for we can still perceive a great gulf between them and the majores. The Capitol was taken by storm, the slaves found there were nailed on crosses, and all the freemen were executed. There seems to be no doubt that Kaso Quinctius was among the latter; and this may have led his father, in the following year, to take revenge in a manner which is pardonable indeed, but ignoble, by exiling Volscius, the accuser of his son.' Lect. vol. i. p. 183. For the supposition that Kæso took part in the attempt of Herdonius, there is no other foundation than the rumours and allegations of the tribunes, before the event, alluded to by Dion. Hal. x. 9, 10. The allegations of the tribunes must be taken in connexion with the story of the forged letter, to which Niebuhr makes no allusion. Niebuhr supports his view of treachery at Rome, in concert with the gentes minores (the distinction between them and the gentes majores being, it should be remarked, an invention of his own), by referring to the patrician clients, under the command of the Sabine, Appius Herdonius,' ib. p. 182: but the Teλárai and OpárоVTEC mentioned in Dion. Hal. x. 14, are the retainers and slaves of Herdonius himself, not of the Roman patricians. The whole narrative of Livy and Dionysius goes to show that there was no concert with either party at Rome; that the patricians were the first to come forward, and that the plebeians held back, only because they wished to make terms for the Terentillian law. Dr. Arnold, as usual, adopts the groundless hypothesis of Niebuhr: Had we (he says) the real history of these times, we shall find in all likelihood that the truth in the stories of Kæso and Coriolanus has been exactly inverted; that the share of the Roman exile in the surprise of the Capitol has been as unduly suppressed as that of the Roman exile in the great Volscian war has been unduly magnified; that Kæso's treason has been transferred to Appius Herdonius, while the glory of the Volscian leader, Attius Tullius, has been bestowed on Coriolanus.' ib. p. 235. Kaso's treachery receives further development in Dr.Arnold's hands: Meanwhile, a darker plot was in agitation: Kaso held frequent communication with them; he had joined himself to a band of exiles and runaway slaves from various quarters, such as abounded in Italy then no less than in the middle ages,' &c. p. 233. Dr. Arnold's view of Attius Tullius is likewise borrowed from Niebuhr, vol. ii. p. 105, and is equally unsupported.

(13) Cincinnatus, the father of Kæso, when elected consul in the place of Valerius, is represented by Livy as reproaching the tribunes with their factious opposition to the efforts of the consuls to arm the people, when Herdonius was in the Capitol; and as arguing that they deserved the same

There is however an account of Kæso in an ancient writer, which represents him as guilty of treason to his country, though not in the manner supposed by Niebuhr. In the work 'De Viris Illustribus,' which passes under the name of Sextus Aurelius Victor, it is stated that Kæso was renounced by his father, and deprived of all his hereditary rights, on account of his insubordinate conduct; that he was also branded by the censors, and that he fled in consequence to the Volscians and Sabines, who were waging war against the Romans under Cloelius Gracchus, and were besieging the consul Minucius with his army at Mount Algidus and that Minucius was subsequently liberated by Cincinnatus.(14) This story is indeed left imperfect; as it does not state what happened to Kæso when his father defeated the enemy, and took their general prisoner. It is however altogether different from the received accounts; for not only are they ignorant of the flight of Kæso to the camp of Cloelius Gracchus, but they suppose that, instead of being repudiated by his father, he is defended and protected by him when prosecuted by the tribunes, and they certainly make no mention of the censorian brand; the office of the censors not being, according to the ordinary statement, created until the year 443 B.C., fifteen years afterwards. (15) Aurelius Victor, on the other hand, evidently

fate as Herdonius. Aulus ille Virginius, quia in Capitolio non fuit, minus supplicii, quam Ap. Herdonius, meruit? plus hercule aliquanto, qui vere rem æstimare velit. Herdonius, si nihil aliud, hostem se fatendo prope denunciavit, ut arma caperetis: hic, negando bella esse, arma vobis ademit, nudosque servis vestris et exulibus objecit. iii. 19. Livy would not have put such words in the mouth of Cincinnatus, if he had thought that the son of Cincinnatus was the real leader of the enterprise, and had been put to death as a prisoner when the Capitol was retaken.

(14) L. Quinctius Cincinnatus filium Kæsonem petulantissimum abdicavit, qui et a censoribus notatus ad Volscos et Sabinos confugit, qui duce Cloelio Graccho bellum adversum Romanos gerebant, et Q. Minucium consulem in Algido monte cum exercitu obsidebant. Quinctius dictator dictus, &c. c. 17. Dionysius, x. 22, and Livy, ii. 25, both describe Gracchus Cloelius as general of the Equians, not of the Volscians and Sabines; and in Livy, iv. 9, the Volscians are described as being led by Clœlius an Equian. Petulans in this passage nearly corresponds to the Greek ißporns.

(15) According to a rescript of Diocletian and Maximian (287 A.D.), preserved in the code, i. 46, 6, the abdicatio of children was not recognised by the Roman law. Abdicatio, quæ Græco more ad alienandos liberos usurpabatur, et dñoкýрvĝis dicebatur, Romanis legibus non comprobatur.'

knows nothing of the misdeeds attributed to Kæso in Dionysius and Livy, and conceives his offences to be of a different character. It should be added that Livy represents Kæso to have been already dead at the time when Aurelius Victor supposes him to have gone over to the enemy.(16) The story of Aurelius Victor does not indeed come to us recommended either by internal probability, or good external attestation; but if Niebuhr was desirous of proving Kæso Quinctius to have been guilty of treachery to his country, the accusation would have received some colour of support from the story of his flight to Cloelius Gracchus, whereas the hypothesis of his complicity with Herdonius is wholly destitute of foundation.

§ 38 It has been already remarked that Dionysius does not state how the falsehood of the testimony of Volscius was discovered; but he appears to connect the proceedings of the tribunes at the trial of Kæso with an incident which he relates under the succeeding year. He describes the plebs as mitigated by the courtesies and cajolery of the patricians, and as relaxing its eagerness for the Terentillian law ;(17) and in order to revive its zeal, the tribunes are stated to have recourse to the following stratagem. They forge a letter, giving an account of an intended treasonable conspiracy of the patricians, and cause it to be delivered to them by an unknown man, as they are sitting together in the forum: they immediately feign alarm; and rumours of imminent danger are circulated through the city. The Senate meets; Virginius lays before it the information which has reached the tribunes, and asks for powers of inquiry into this dangerous plot. The senators are struck with amazement, and are at a loss what to do: it seems equally diffi

But see Arntzen's note on Victor, and the example which he cites from Livy, Epit. 54. The term άokýpuģis occurs in Plut. Them. 2, where it is stated that, according to some accounts, Themistocles was repudiated by his father.

(16) Livy, iii. 25. The mention of Kæso's death precedes the Equian war, and the embassy to Gracchus Clœlius.

(17) The same description of the demeanour of the patricians towards the plebeians at this conjuncture is given by Livy, iii. 14. Benigne salutare, alloqui plebis homines, domum invitare, &c.

cult to give to the tribunes a power of investigation, and to withhold it when the consul Appius relieves their difficulty, by remarking that the information is anonymous, by challenging the tribunes to produce their informant, and by accusing them of having themselves forged the letter upon which they relied. The Senate are so satisfied by these arguments, that they refuse to hear anything further from Virginius, who then convenes a popular assembly, and accuses the Senate and consuls; but Appius attends it, and by repeating the same arguments which he had used before the Senate, he convinces all the well-intentioned among his hearers of the emptiness of the alarm.(18) Hooke treats this narrative with contempt, as utterly destitute of probability, and as a private invention of Dionysius, or some of his predecessors. (19) Livy speaks of the efforts made at this time by the tribunes to create suspicions of treasonable designs on the part of the patricians; in particular, they are accused of intending to destroy the tribunician power, and to restore the constitution to the state in which it was before the secession :(20) but he says nothing of the forged letter.

§ 39 The prophecy in the Sibylline books was soon fulfilled, and the fears of the tribunes verified, by the enterprise of Herdonius, a Sabine, who with a large band of slaves and exiles(21) entered Rome at night, and obtained possession of the

(18) Dion. Hal. x. 9-13.

(19) Such is the story Dionysius has given us of the deep laid scheme, the wonderful contrivance of the tribunes, to prevent any farther opposition to their bill. They gravely and pathetically request of the Senate to erect them into a court of inquisition for examining into the treasonable practices, and disposing of the liberties and lives of the Roman Senators and Knights. And the ground of this modest demand is a letter which they pretend to have received from some strangers, advising them of a plot formed by the nobles of Rome against the Commons. The Senators, though they lay their heads together, are embarrassed, and much at a loss for an answer. But the Consul Claudius being a man of deep penetration, and a ready wit, it comes into his mind, to ask the tribunes, who sent the letter? and who brought it? and they wont tell; and so there's an end of the matter.' b. ii. c. 21.

(20) iii. 15.

(21) Livy says exsules servique;' Dionysius Teλáraι and OepáñоVTES ; c. 14. Dionysius afterwards speaks of Herdonius expecting that exiles would return; c. 15. There is, however, nothing in the history of the