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Still in the winter you may see the dazzling peak of the "gelidus Algidus" and "ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte"; and wandering at Tivoli in the summer, his description, "Domus Albuneae resonantis, Et praeceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda Mobililius pomaria rivis," is as true and fresh as if his words were of yesterday.
And may Diana, who possesses Mount Aventine and Algidus, regard the prayers of the Quindecemvirs, and lend a gracious ear to the supplications of the youths. We, the choir taught to sing the praises of Phoebus and Diana, bear home with us a good and certain hope, that Jupiter, and all the other gods, are sensible of these our supplications.
They shall hear it now, and shall soon avenge it; for you have scorned alike the laws of the gods and of men." The deputies returned to Rome, and reported how they had been insulted. The senate at once declared war, and an army was sent towards Algidus, where the enemy lay.
He betrays, moreover, a taste for the beauties of nature which is distinctly un-Roman. Even the Roman poets were almost utterly oblivious to the charms of scenery. When Horace points out of the window to the snow lying deep on Soracte, it is not to emphasise the beauty of the scene, but a preliminary to telling the boy to pile the logs of Algidus upon the fire.
The latter penetrated as far as Mount Algidus, as in B.C. 458, when they were routed by old Cincinnatus. The decemvirs probably, like the patrician burgesses in former times, regarded these inroads not without satisfaction; for they turned away the mind of the people from their sufferings at home. Yet from these very wars sprung the events which overturned their power and destroyed themselves.
But the country-house which he loved best of all was his villa at Tusculum, a Latin town lying on the slope of Mount Algidus, at such a height above the sea as would make a notable hill in England.
To this Icilius consented, but he delayed giving bail, pretending that he could not procure it readily; and in the mean time he sent off a secret message to the camp on Algidus, to inform Virginius of what had happened. As soon as the bail was given, Appius also sent a message to the decemvirs in command of that army, ordering them to refuse leave of absence to Virginius.
Though violently opposed by the patricians, this law was passed, in the year 471 B.C. Other measures were, however, still necessary to give the plebeians a satisfactory position in the state. In the year 458, the ancient tribe of the Æquians came down upon Rome, and taking up a position upon Mount Algidus, just beyond Alba Longa, repulsed an army sent against them, and surrounded its camp.
For the destined victim, which is pastured in the snowy Algidus among the oaks and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat shall stain the axes of the priests. It is not required of you, who are crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep.
We know that in antiquity Mount Algidus, an outlying group of the Alban hills, was covered with dark forests of oak; and among the tribes who belonged to the Latin League in the earliest days, and were entitled to share the flesh of the white bull sacrificed on the Alban Mount, there was one whose members styled themselves the Men of the Oak, doubtless on account of the woods among which they dwelt.
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