Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 21, 2025
The other consul opposed the donation, supported by the senators, nor, indeed, were all the commons opposed to him: they had at first begun to feel disgust that this gift had been extended from the citizens to the allies, and thus rendered common: in the next place they frequently heard the consul Verginius in the assemblies as it were prophesying, that the gift of his colleague was pestilential: that those lands were sure to bring slavery to those who received them: that the way was being paved to a throne.
The girl being struck dumb with terror, a crowd collected at the cries of her nurse, who besought the protection of the citizens. The popular names of her father, Verginius, and of her betrothed, Icilius, were in every one's mouth. Esteem for them gained the good-will of their acquaintances, the heinousness of the proceeding, that of the crowd.
This proposition was accepted. He secured the appointment of Titus Quinctius, Aulus Verginius, and Publius Furius as triumvirs for distributing the land: such as wished to receive land were ordered to give in their names.
Accordingly, some of the junior patricians, being sent to the camp which was at that time on Mount Vecilius, announced to the decemvirs that they should do their utmost to keep the soldiers from mutinying. There Verginius occasioned greater commotion than he had left behind him in the city.
Because the official acts of the decemvirs seemed displeasing to the greater portion of the patricians, this step quieted the people with the hope that the government would be abolished through the senate. The senate was of opinion that the commons should not be stirred up, and that much more effectual measures should be taken lest the arrival of Verginius should cause any commotion in the army.
The supporters of Verginia, after they had urged that Verginius was absent on business of the state, that he would be present in two days if word were sent to him, and that it was unfair that in his absence he should run any risk regarding his children, demanded that Appius should adjourn the whole matter till the arrival of the father; that he should allow the claim for her liberty pending judgment according to the law passed by himself, and not allow a maiden of ripe age to encounter the risk of her reputation before that of her liberty.
A revolution was fermenting in men's minds; and its outbreak was hastened by the unjust sentence pronounced by Appius in the process as to the freedom of the daughter of the centurion Lucius Verginius, the bride of the former tribune of the people Lucius Icilius a sentence which wrested the maiden from her relatives with a view to make her non-free and beyond the pale of the law, and induced her father himself to plunge his knife into the heart of his daughter in the open Forum, to rescue her from certain shame.
The claimant rehearsed the farce well known to the judge, as being in presence of the actual author of the plot, that the girl, born in his house, and clandestinely transferred from thence to the house of Verginius, had been fathered on the latter: that what he stated was established by certain evidence, and that he would prove it, even if Verginius himself, who would be the principal sufferer, were judge: that meanwhile it was only fair the servant should accompany her master.
Accordingly, Caeso Fabius, having been elected consul with Titus Verginius not more with the good-will of the senators than of the commons, gave no attention either to wars, or levies, or anything else in preference, until, the hope of concord being now in some measure assured, the feelings of the commons should be united with those of the senators at the earliest opportunity.
There, although the Romans gained the upper hand by only a trifling advantage, yet that contest rendered the soldiers more serviceable for future battles by the restoration of their former courage. Aulus Verginius and Spurius Servilius were next chosen consuls. After the defeat sustained in the last battle, the Veientines declined an engagement.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking