carried on plans of a treasonable nature, is a question which we are not in a condition to solve, if we reject the positive assurances of our historians as to his guilt. The guilt or innocence of state criminals is sometimes a doubtful historical question even for times when prisoners had a public trial, and the proceedings of the trial were recorded by short-hand writers. How can we venture to pronounce upon this case, when we know nothing of the means by which the memory of the transaction was preserved,(7) and when the received story says that he was put to death by Servilius, as master of the horse, acting under the instructions of Cincinnatus, appointed dictator on account of the very treason imputed to Mælius; when the other, and apparently the best attested story, denies that there was any dictator or master of the horse, and makes Servilius act under the immediate instructions of the Senate? If such patent facts as these are in doubt, what can we know with certainty about the secret acts of an untried man? Niebuhr mainly rests his opinion upon the condemnation of Ahala by the people, and his consequent exile: which he considers to be a well-attested fact. It is indeed mentioned by Cicero and Valerius Maximus; but it is negatived by Livy, who says that an accusation preferred against him by a tribune was repudiated by the people.(71) Even if his condemnation, actual or virtual, were an ascertained fact, it would be necessary that we should know the circumstances under which it took place, in order to treat it as evidence of guilt. In the eye of a historian, the condemnation of a state prisoner by a court of justice is not a proof of his guilt more than the adoption of a law by a legislative assembly is a proof of its goodness. Lastly, it should be observed that two portions of the story come to us

(70) After having related the common account, Dr. Arnold proceeds thus: Such is the story which the traditions or memoirs of the Quinetian and Servilian families handed down, and which the annalists adopted on their authority; ib. p. 357. This however is only his supposition; nothing is known as to the source from which the Roman annalists obtained their accounts. Niebuhr, ib. p, 422, also speaks of the traditions of the Quinctian and Servilian houses.'

(71) C. Servilius Ahala was master of the horse in 439 B C. Another C. Servilius Ahala occurs as consul in 427 B.C., twelve years later. There seems to be no reason why these should not be the same person; Livy, iv. 30.

in the suspicious form of etymological explanations of proper names. (72)

§ 60 The event next in succession concerns, not the domestic, but the foreign relations of the Republic. Fidenæ, a Roman colony, revolts to the Veientes, and to their king, Lars Tolumnius. Four ambassadors are sent by the Romans to demand an explanation; but they are put to death by the Fidenates, at the command of the Veientine king.(7) Statues of these ambassadors, who had undertaken a perilous duty, and had died in the performance of it, were erected at the public cost in the rostra, and were extant in the times of Cicero and Pliny.(74) War was immediately commenced with the Veientes, and a dear bought victory was obtained. In this anxious state of affairs, a dictator is appointed. Mamercus Emilius is selected for the post, and he names the young Cincinnatus his master of the horse.(75) A battle ensues against the Veientes and their allies, in which the Romans are victorious; and A. Cornelius Cossus, a military tribune, rides at the king, dismounts him with his spear, then kills him, strips him of his armour, cuts off his head, and carries it away on the point of a javelin.(76) The

(72) Namely, Ahala and Equimelium. Becker, ib., doubts the historical nature of the origin of the name Equimelium, and thinks it is one of the many explanations of unintelligible names, from a mere resemblance of sounds.

(73) The execution of the Roman ambassadors by order of Tolumnius is recognised by the Veientine Senate in an answer given to a subsequent Roman embassy, in 406 B.C., thirty-two years afterwards; Livy, iv. 58.

(74) Livy, iv. 17; Cic. Philipp. ix. 2; Plin. N. H. xxxiv. 11. The words of Cicero, 'quorum statuæ in rostris steterunt usque ad nostram memoriam,' seem to imply that they had been removed before the time when he was speaking. Pliny, on the other hand, speaks of them as being among the most ancient statues. Hence Niebuhr conjectures that Pliny mistook copies for originals; vol. ii. n. 1004. The names of the four ambassadors in Livy and in Pliny agree, except that Livy has Sp. Antius and Pliny Sp. Nautius. Compare Becker, vol. i. p. 291.

(75) Eutropius follows Livy in making L. Cincinnatus the master of the horse in this dictatorship, i. 19.

(76) Dionysius, in a fragment of his twelfth book, describes the encounter between A. Cornelius Cossus and Lars Tolumnius; they ride at one another, the spear of Tolumnius enters the breast of the horse of Cossus, but the spear of Cossus pierces Tolumnius himself through his shield and cuirass-Cossus afterwards despatches him with his sword. The king's death disheartens the army. Dionysius describes Tolumnius as

defeat of the army follows upon the death of the king; and a triumph is decreed to the dictator. But the chief object of popular attention on that day, says Livy, was the tribune Cossus, bearing the spolia opima of the king whom he had killed with his own hand; the soldiers celebrated him in rude verses, comparing him with Romulus; and after the celebration of the triumph, he dedicated the spoils of Tolumnius in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, close to those previously consecrated by the founder of the state. (77) Having given this account, Livy subjoins a correction, which he must have inserted after his narrative of this transaction had been composed, and perhaps after his history had been published. He simply adds it, as the result of subsequent information, but without altering what he had previously written. He states in this passage that in the foregoing narrative he had, on the authority of all previous writers, described Cossus as a military tribune, when he dedicated the spolia opima of Tolumnius; but he had since been informed by Augustus Cæsar, who, in his restoration of the ruined temples, (78) had personally inspected the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, that the inscription on the linen cuirass(79) of Tolumnius there preserved designated Cossus not as military tribune, but as consul. Livy considers that the spoils taken by one general from another were alone called spolia opima, though this use of the term seems not to have been fixed; he thinks that the year 428 B.C., in which alone the ancient histories, and the lists of magistrates in the linen books preserved in the temple of Moneta, and cited by Licinius Macer,

πάνδεινα ποιῶν κατ' αὐτῶν, which expression alludes to the murder of the ambassadors, xii. 2.

(77) Livy, iv. 17—20.

The same account of Cossus is repeated in c. 32, in the speech of Æmilius.

(78) See Horat. Carm. iii. 6; Suet. Oct. 30.

(79) The epithet Avopn occurs twice in the Homeric catalogue, once applied to Ajax the son of Oileus, Iliad ii. 529, 830. Herod. iii. 47, mentions a linen thorax as having been sent as a present by Amasis to the Lacedæmonians, and another as having been dedicated by him in the temple of Minerva at Lindus in Rhodes. Some fragments of the latter were extant in the time of Pliny, H. N. xix. 2. Linen breast-armour was also used in later times; see Nepos Iphicrat. 1, Suet. Galba, 19, and the commentators.

recognised Cossus as consul, is not suited to this battle; he admits that there is less objection to the year 426 B.C., when Cossus was consular tribune and master of the horse, and also fought another great equestrian combat; but on the whole he seems to conclude (though his language is obscure) that the inscription is decisive in favour of Cornelius Cossus being consul in the year to which the battle is usually assigned.(80)

If we suppose the inscription upon the armour of Tolumnius to have been placed upon it when the spoils were dedicated, the argument of Livy is conclusive. It is however possible that the inscription may have been subsequent to the consulship of Cossus, and that the spoils may have been called spolia opima, though they were taken from the commander of the enemy by a military tribune. (81) What is however most remarkable in Livy's treatment of the subject, is the state of uncertainty in which he leaves it. After having given a minute description of the appearance of Cossus at the triumph of the dictator, and of his diverting the popular attention from the principal personage, Livy makes no attempt to estimate the value of the unanimous account of the preceding historians, corroborated by the list of magistrates in the linen registers. If this account was attested by contemporary evidence, it was natural to look out for some mode of explaining the inscription, consistently with the hypothesis that Cossus was not consul in the year when Tolumnius was slain. If on the other hand this account was insufficiently attested, the hypothesis that Cossus was consul when he dedicated the spoils is not improbable.

All the accounts agree in stating that there were three spolia opima; the first taken by Romulus from Acron, king of the Caninenses; the second taken by Cossus from Tolumnius; the third taken by Marcellus from Viridomarus, a king of the Gauls.(2) Aurelius Victor represents Cossus as master of the

(80) Ib. c. 20. Compare Niebuhr, Hist. vol. ii, n. 1011,

(81) See Festus in opima, p. 186.

(82) See Plut. Rom. 16, who states that Cossus triumphed in a chariot drawn by four horses, Marcell, 8; Festus in opima spolia, Val. Max, iii,

horse to Cincinnatus, when he killed Tolumnius: Valerius Maximus speaks of him as master of the horse on the same occasion. The article in Festus describes Cossus as consul, when he gained these spoils: Dionysius and Servius agree with the received account, in calling him a military tribune.(*3) An entirely different story is followed by Propertius. He describes the Romans as besieging Veii, and Tolumnius as parleying with them from the walls. Cossus challenges him to a single combat in the open plain; the challenge is accepted-Tolumnius falls, and Cossus carries away his head as a trophy. The latter is the only circumstance in the story which agrees with the account in Livy. These events are again presented in a different light by Diodorus. He places the slaughter of the ambassadors in the year in which Cossus is consular tribune, and afterwards master of the horse to Mam. Æmilius (426 B.C.), and states that there was a great but indecisive battle with the Fidenates.(84) This account confounds in one the events which Livy assigns to two distinct years, 437 B.C. and 426 B.C., divided by an entire decennium. Livy moreover describes the Fidenates on both occasions as defeated. Diodorus seems either to have confounded two dictatorships of Æmilius, or to have followed some account in which they were not distinguished.

§ 61 In 435 B.C., the Fidenates and Veientes appear under the walls of Rome. In consequence of the alarm, A. Servilius is appointed dictator, who besieges Fidenæ, and takes it by a mine. In the next year, an invasion of all the Etruscan nations is threatened, and Æmilius is appointed dictator: it appeared however that the report was premature, and the dictator, in

2, § 3-5; Victor, de Vir. Ill. 25; Servius ad Æn. vi. 842, 856; Propert. v. 10.

(83) Opima magnifica et ampla. Unde spolia quoque quæ dux populi Romani duci hostium detraxit; quorum tanta raritas est, ut intra annos paulo [minus quingentos triginta, tantum] trina contigerint nomini Romano. Una, quæ Romulus de Acrone; altera, quæ consul Cossus Cornelius de Tolumnio; tertia quæ M. Marcellus Jovi Feretrio de Viridomaro fixerunt. Festus, p. 186. Some of the MSS. of Servius make him a consular tribune. Dion. Hal. xii. 2, calls him xiλiaoxós τis 'Pwμałos.

(84) xii. 80. Niebuhr supposes that Diodorus followed Fabius; Hist. vol. ii. p. 457, 461. This however is mere conjecture.