gave vent to their petty local arse Fescennine verse. The ity were doubtless of a higher sting was early felt by the the Twelve Tables, long bethe Licinian laws, a severe denounced against the citizen ose or recite verses reflecting tire is, indeed, the only sort which the Latin poets, whose down to us, were not mere from this law that there had been early had been lost before his time. "Quami tabulæ declarant, condi jam tum solitum -ret fieri ad alterius injuriam lege sanxe might be di sonian soil. pride, "is a naturally fr government people; and derived from essentially I earliest sati under the Lucilius wa into a dun cumstances interfered bitter lines might be distinguished the flavour of th "Satire," said Quintilian, wit sonian soil. pride, "is all our own." It sprang, in naturally from the constitution of the I government and from the spirit of the I people; and, though it submitted to metrica derived from Greece, it retained to the 1 essentially Roman character. Lucilius w earliest satirist whose works were held in under the Cæsars. But, many years Lucilius was born, Nævius had been into a dungeon, and guarded there wit cumstances of unusual rigour till the Tr interfered in his behalf, on account bitter lines in which he had attacked the s, as Niebuhr has remarked, nerally taken the popular side. mistaken in supposing that, at the civil conflict, they employed sifying all the most powerful ches of the Tribunes, and in the chiefs of the aristocracy. efect, every domestic scandal, shonourable to a noble house, out, brought into notice, and e illustrious head of the aristoarcus Furius Camillus, might me measure, protected by his Gloriosus. Aulus Gellius, iii. 3. and nobles drew they were w early history in a military a multitude to have bee and learned in war they valour. So their weakn magistracies their depart military con * In nobles drew upon them the fiercest public they were wanting, if any credit is due early history of Rome, in a class of qualities in a military Commonwealth, is sufficient t a multitude of offences. Several of them to have been eloquent, versed in civil bu and learned after the fashion of their ag in war they were not distinguished by s valour. Some of them, as if conscious their weakness lay, had, when filling the l magistracies, taken internal administrat their department of public business, and 1 military command to their colleagues.* * In the years of the city 260, 304, and 330. T them had been intrusted with an army, and had failed ignominiously.* None of them had been honoured with a triumph. None of them had achieved any martial exploit, such as those by which Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, and, above all, the great Camillus, had extorted the reluctant esteem of the multitude. During the Licinian conflict, Appius Claudius Crassus signalised himself by the ability and severity with which he harangued against the two great agitators. He would naturally, therefore, be the favourite mark of the Plebeian satirists; nor would they have been at a loss to find a point on which he was open to attack. His grandfather, called, like himself, Appius Claudius, had left a name as much detested as that of Sextus Tarquinius. This elder Appius had been Consul more than seventy years before the introduction of the Licinian laws. By availing himself of a singular crisis in public feeling, * In the year of the city 282. |