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Updated: June 8, 2025
If a commonwealth, which implies the welfare of the entire community, could not exist in Agrigentum, Syracuse, or Athens when tyrants reigned over them if it could not exist in Rome when under the oligarchy of the decemvirs neither do I see how this sacred name of commonwealth can be applied to a democracy and the sway of the mob; because, in the first place, my Scipio, I build on your own admirable definition, that there can be no community, properly so called, unless it be regulated by a combination of rights.
Whilst Horatius was exclaiming in this manner, "and the decemvirs could not discover any limit either to their anger or forbearance, nor could they see to what the thing would come, Caius Claudius, who was uncle to Appius the decemvir, delivered an address more like entreaties than reproach, beseeching him by the shade of his own brother and of his father, that he would hold in recollection the civil society in which he had been born rather than the confederacy nefariously entered into with his colleagues; that he besought this much more on Appius's own account, than for the sake of the commonwealth.
Both parties in Rome consented to the creation of the decemvirs, and to their exercising unrestricted powers, from the desire which the one had to put an end to the consular name, and the other to abolish the authority of the tribunes.
This very matter, that there should not be the right of intermarriage between patricians and commons, did not the decemvirs introduce within the last few years to the utmost injury of the commons, on a principle most detrimental to the public? Can there be a greater or more marked insult, than that one portion of the state, as if contaminated, should be deemed unworthy of intermarriage?
The work was accomplished in fourteen months; and the twelve books or tables, which the new decemvirs produced, might be designed to imitate the labors of their Roman predecessors.
When the troops arrived, they and the people joined in demanding that the Decemvirs should be given up to them to be burnt alive, and that the old magistrates should be restored.
When Valerius, from the threshold of the senate-house, now craved the protection of the citizens, Lucius Cornelius, embracing Appius, put an end to the struggle, not in reality consulting the interest of him whose interest he pretended to consult; and after permission to say what he pleased had been obtained for Valerius by means of Cornelius, when this liberty did not extend beyond words, the decemvirs attained their object.
The Mountain, friends of Danton, fearing, for their own sakes, the new provisions, which left the representatives at the mercy of the Decemvirs, proposed to the convention to provide for the safety of its members. Bourdon de l'Oise was the first to speak on this subject; he was supported.
They refused to go on any other conditions, than that the decemvirs should lay down the badges of that office, which had expired the year before. The decemvirs, complaining that they were now being degraded, stated that they would not resign their office, until those laws were passed on account of which they had been appointed.
A levy was proclaimed without objection on the part of the patricians; the young men answered to their names, as the government was without appeal. The legions having been enrolled, the decemvirs proceeded to arrange among themselves who should set out to the war, who should command the armies. The leading men among the decemvirs were Quintus Fabius and Appius Claudius.
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