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Updated: May 29, 2025
In the Sabine district, Lucius Siccius, who, during the unpopularity of the decemvirs, introduced, in secret conversation with the common soldiers, mention of electing tribunes and of a secession, was sent forwards to select a place for a camp: instructions were given to the soldiers whom they had sent to accompany him in that expedition, to attack him in a convenient place and slay him.
Thereupon the former tribune of the people, Lucius Siccius Dentatus, the bravest man in Rome, who had fought in a hundred and twenty battles and had forty-five honourable scars to show, was found dead in front of the camp, foully murdered, as it was said, at the instigation of the decemvirs.
Then followed two events which were preserved in well-known legends, and which give the popular narrative of the manner in which the power of the decemvirs was at last overthrown. In the army sent against the Sabines, Siccius Dentatus was known as the bravest man.
Thereupon the former tribune of the people, Lucius Siccius Dentatus, the bravest man in Rome, who had fought in a hundred and twenty battles and had forty-five honourable scars to show, was found dead in front of the camp, foully murdered, as it was said, at the instigation of the decemvirs.
Nor was the army among the Sabines inactive. There also, at the instance of Icilius and Numitorius, a secession from the decemvirs took place, the commotion of men's minds on recollecting the murder of Siccius being not less than that, which the recent account of the barbarous attempt made on the maiden to gratify lust had enkindled.
They did not kill him with impunity; several of the assassins fell around him, as he offered resistance, since, possessing great personal strength and displaying courage equal to that strength, he defended himself against them, although surrounded. The rest brought news into the camp that Siccius, while fighting bravely, had fallen into an ambush, and that some soldiers had been lost with him.
They sent Lucius Siccius, who was quartered among the Sabines, to take observations for the purpose of selecting a site for a camp: he, availing himself of the unpopularity of the decemvirs, was introducing, in his secret conversations with the common soldiers, suggestions of a secession and the election of tribunes: the soldiers, whom they had sent to accompany him in that expedition, were commissioned to attack him in a convenient place and slay him.
We love to ponder on the bitter exile of Coriolanus, his treasonable revenge, and the noble patriotism of his weeping and indignant mother, who saved her country but lost her son; on Cincinnatus, taken from the plow and sent as general and dictator against the Acquians; on the Fabian gens, defending Rome a whole year from the attacks of the Veientines until they were all cut off, like the Spartan band at Thermopylae; on Siccius Dentatus, the veteran captain of one hundred and twenty battles, who was only slain by rolling a stone from a high rock upon his head; on Cossos, slaying the king of Veii with his own hand; on the siege of Veii, itself, a city as large as Rome, lasting ten years, and only finally taken by draining the Alban lake; on the pride and avarice of the banished Camillus, and his subsequent rescue of Rome from the Gauls; on the sacred geese of the capitol, and Manlius who slew its assailants; on the siege of the capitol for seven months by these Celtic invaders, and the burning and sack of the city, and its deliverance by the great Camillus.
At first the narrators were believed; afterwards a cohort, which went by permission of the decemvirs to bury those who had fallen, when they observed that none of the bodies there were stripped, that Siccius lay in the middle with his arms, all the bodies being turned towards him, whilst there was neither any body of the enemy, nor even any traces of them as going away; they brought back his body, saying, that he had certainly been slain by his own men.
The patricians, alarmed for the general safety, though there was a meeting of the senate every day, wasted the time in wrangling more frequently than in deliberation. The murder of Siccius, the lust of Appius, and the disgraces incurred in war were urged as charges against the decemvirs. It was resolved that Valerius and Horatius should proceed to the Aventine.
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