Such is the copious and minute account of the events of this year, given by Dionysius. The most prominent actor in the drama is Siccius Dentatus, who appears first as the type of military bravery, and as the living example of the plebeian grievance of service in war unrewarded by a share of conquered land; and secondly, as the intended victim, together with 800 comrades, of a cold-blooded attempt of the consuls to consign a plebeian troop to destruction. The enumeration of the battles, the wounds, and the rewards of Siccius, though it is not peculiar to Dionysius, but recurs in other writers, and seems to have been a received anecdote in Roman history, can scarcely be considered as within the range of possibility, still less of probability. Making every allowance for the continuous system of warfare in which Rome was engaged, it is scarcely conceivable that a man fifty-eight years old, who had served forty years, should have been in one hundred and twenty battles, and have gained nearly two hundred military distinctions. His service would have begun in 497 B.C., but between this year and 455 B.C. there are several years in which no war is mentioned; so that we must suppose him, in each year of war, to have been present, on an average, at more than three battles: and at each battle to have gained nearly two distinctions. The description of the treatment of Siccius and his band of eight hundred men by Romilius in the Equian campaign, is highly dramatic, but it is wholly wanting in verisimilitude. No adequate motive for so treacherous and sanguinary an act is assigned: the contests of the plebeians with the patricians were not recent, and Siccius had not hitherto rendered himself formidable to the patricians. Whatever may have been the habits of military obedience among the Romans, it is incredible that a body of eight hundred volunteers should have quietly marched to certain destruction, when they and the rest of the army knew that the order was given, not for the purpose of attacking a post which it was important to take, but merely in order to ensure their death. Such an event is without a parallel in history. (65) This passive and unresisting obedience

(65) The systematic policy of getting rid of hostile partisans by putting them to death, on various pretexts, in the field or in the camp, is ascribed

seems the more improbable, when we find that the same men are represented as cutting the throats of the prisoners at night, burning the spoil, and marching back to Rome, without the consul's order, in a state of open mutiny, and for the purpose of preventing the consuls from obtaining a triumph. The rapidity with which this nocturnal exploit is executed likewise savours of the marvellous, and is open to the same criticism which the Emperor Napoleon applies to Virgil's description of the burning, capture, and plunder of Troy in a single night.

The whole account, from the first appearance of Siccius in the popular assembly, to the trial of the consuls, is given with circumstantial minuteness. We have not only the colloquy between Siccius and Romilius, but the precise means by which Siccius escaped from the trap laid for him, and took the enemy's camp; and the touching anecdote of Sp. Virginius, the patrician witness against the cruel consul. Unless this account was derived from a contemporary chronicler, to whom all the details of the transaction were known, (66) the whole story must be a pure What makes the copious report of Dionysius the more remarkable is, that Livy is evidently ignorant of it, and gives a brief narrative which supposes it to be false. His account is, that 'the Equians being reported to have invaded the Tusculan territory, both consuls were sent after them with an army, and found them on Mount Algidus. There a battle took place, above 7000 of the enemy were killed; the others

romance.

to the decemvirs by Dion. Hal. xi. 24. The murder of Siccius is represented by Livy as the act of the commanders in the camp, not of Appius; iii. 43.

(66) Niebuhr, after mentioning that Siccius was called the Roman Achilles (see above, p. 185, note 56), remarks that we may more aptly term him the Roman Roland; more especially since, like the Paladin of French romance, he fell by treachery. No warrior of a chronicled age should be compared with the heroes of Greek poetry, no Roman centurion with the son of Peleus;' Hist. vol. ii. p. 346. From this passage it appears that Niebuhr supposed this period to have possessed a contemporary history. It may be added that Niebuhr not only considers the story of Cincinnatus, which is not many years earlier, to have been derived from a poem, but also that of the siege of Veii, which is some time later. He calls Veii the Roman Ilion; ib. p. 475. For similar reasons, why should not Siccius be the Roman Achilles ?

were put to flight: a great booty was obtained. The consuls sold it, on account of the low state of the treasury. The army however resented this measure, and it afforded the tribunes a ground for accusing the consuls. Accordingly, as soon as their year of office had expired, C. Claudius Cicero, a tribune of the plebs, gave notice of trial to Romilius; and L. Alienus, an ædile of the plebs, to Veturius. Both were condemned, to the great indignation of the patricians, Romilius in 10,000 asses, Veturius in 15,000.'(67) Nothing is here said about Siccius Dentatus and the attempt to kill him and his troop: instead of his burning the plunder, the consuls sell it, in order to replenish the empty treasury-and the offence to the army is given, not by the treachery towards Siccius and the volunteers, but by the sale of the plunder, and the refusal to divide it among the soldiers. Both historians agree as to the impeachment of the consuls, and the amounts of their fines: but they differ as to the accusers, for Livy says nothing of Siccius, and Dionysius does not mention C. Claudius Cicero. Neither explains why the fine of Veturius was larger than that of Romilius. The relative amount of the fines is not only unexplained by Dionysius, but is inconsistent with his account; for Romilius acts the leading part in the drama of Siccius, and Veturius is merely a dumb personage in it. Gellius states that Siccius was tribune of the plebs in the consulship next after that of Romilius and Veturius;(68) so far agreeing with Dionysius; and Pliny commends Siccius for having procured the condemnation of the exconsul Romilius for having made a bad use of his command;(69) words which seem to imply that he had failed as a general, rather than attempted to procure the death of Siccius himself.

The previous parts of the long narrative of Dionysius— namely, the violences offered to the tribunes, the attempted impeachment of the consuls, the endeavour to put the agrarian

(69) Præterea (quod optimum in operibus ejus reor) uno ex ducibus T. Romilio ex consulatu ad populum convicto male acti imperii;

N. H. vii. 29.

law to the vote, and the fining of the patricians, by a practical adoption of a maxim similar to that which renders the ministers responsible for the acts of a constitutional king-are all wanting in Livy. The prudence of the patricians in advising the accused members of their order to submit to the forfeiture of their property, and the subsequent re-purchase of it, without any remonstrance from the tribunes, is a transaction deficient in internal probability: nor is it at all intelligible how, if the comitia tributa consisted only of plebeians, if the tribunes could put any legislative project to the vote, and if, when sanctioned by a majority it became law, it would have been possible for the patricians, by force and illegal means, to have prevented the passing of the agrarian laws for so many years.(70) The plebeians had numbers on their side, and they were armed, as they formed the bulk of the legions.

It may be added that Livy and Dionysius agree in representing Siccius Dentatus as treacherously killed by a party of his own men, at the direction of the decemvirs, a few years afterwards :(") and it is a singular circumstance that the same man should have been twice the object of treacherous attempts on his life by his own general; one of which was successful, and the other unsuccessful. The story in the consulship of Romilius and Veturius is open to the suspicion of being a modified version of the story under the decemvirate. (72)

The narrative which has just been recited furnishes a clear illustration of the difficulties which beset the evidences of Roman history at this period. Dionysius gives a copious relation, full of improbabilities and inconsistencies, but so minute and detailed that, if true, it must have proceeded from a contemporary writer. It is certain that there were no native historians of Rome till more than two centuries after this period; and the

(70) In Dion. Hal. x. 51, Romilius says to the Senate: μerà peɣáλw v μισθῶν ἔμαθον, ὅτι ἔλαττον ὑμῶν ἐστι τοῦ βουλομένου τὸ δυνάμενον, καὶ πολλοὺς ἤδη τὸν ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἀγῶνα ἀραμένους περιείδετε ἀναρπασθέντας ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου, τοῖς ἀναγκαίοις εἴξαντες.

(71) Dion. Hal. xi. 25-7; Livy, iii. 43; below, § 50.

(72) See Niebuhr, Hist. vol. ii. p. 347.

account is too detailed for the registration of a pontifical annalist. Livy, moreover, not only is ignorant of this detailed account, but gives a concise narrative of events which altogether excludes it, and necessarily implies its falsity. Under these circumstances, what certain conclusion can we arrive at, or how can we give credence either to the copious details of the Greek, or to the brief sketch of the Roman, historian? What reason have we for preferring one story to the other, or for supposing that either historian derived his information from authentic contemporary testimony ?(73)

§ 44 Dionysius refers to the same year, the consulship of Aternius and Tarpeius, a law empowering all magistrates to fine persons who resisted their authority, but limiting the fine to two oxen and thirty sheep.(74) This law is mentioned by Festus, but he makes the highest fine consist of two sheep and thirty oxen, and he refers the law to the consulship of Menenius and Sestius, in the following year; whereas he describes the law of the year of Aternius and Tarpeius as fixing the ratio of money to the sheep and cattle; viz., ten asses for a sheep, and one hundred asses for an ox.(76) Gellius gives the same account of the Aternian law as Festus; he likewise agrees with Festus as to the two sheep and thirty oxen.(77) The different accounts of the

(73) See the note of Hooke, b. 2, c. 25, in which he compares the accounts of this year given by Dionysius and Livy. He concludes it thus: 'If one considers the singular negligence of the consuls after the victory, with regard to the enemy's camp, which contained such a rich booty; the monstrous breaches of discipline imputed to that old soldier Siccius; the injustice which, in burning the spoil, he is guilty of towards the consuls' troops, who expected to share it among them, and with whom he was on terms of affection; and lastly, the Senate's approving all this conduct, and taking part with him against the consuls; I say, if one considers these things, it may incline one to believe that Dionysius borrowed his account from some memoirs as authentic as the history of Guy, Earl of Warwick.' (74) Dion. Hal. x. 50. Brissonius proposes to reverse the numbers in the text of Dionysius, and to assimilate the statement to that of Gellius. Niebuhr says that it is an erroneous conjecture of Dionysius, vol. ii. n. 691.

(76) In peculatus, p. 237, compare p. 24, and Müller's note.

(77) xi. 1. He seems to consider the maximum of the fine as independent of the Aternian law; Niebuhr, ib. n. 690, asserts that the statement of Gellius and Festus respecting the Aternian law is certainly erroneous.'

VOL. II.