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Updated: June 8, 2025
This defect was perceived by Virginius, at whose instance twenty military tribunes were appointed by the commons to be their spokesmen with the senate, and to negotiate terms; who, having asked that Valerius and Horatius might be sent to them, to whom their wishes would be made known, these declined to go until the decemvirs had laid down their office.
Under the decemvirs the ancient valour of the Roman soldiers had in no degree abated; yet, because they were no longer animated by the same good will, they did not exert themselves as they were wont.
When those who had been summoned did not assemble, state messengers were despatched to their houses, both to levy the penalties, and to make inquiries whether they purposely refused to attend. They brought back word that the senate was in the country. This was more pleasing to the decemvirs, than if they brought word that they were present and refused obedience to their commands.
But these two last were of a most oppressive and arbitrary kind, devoted chiefly to restore the ancient privileges of the patrician caste. Of these tables, it should be observed that they were made laws not by the vote of the people, but by the simple edict of the decemvirs. It was, no doubt, expected that the second decemvirs also would have held comitia for the election of successors.
The transactions of the Romans, from the building of the city of Rome to the capture of the same city, first under kings, then under consuls, and dictators, and decemvirs, and consular tribunes, their wars abroad, their dissensions at home, I have exhibited in five books: matters obscure, as well by reason of their very great antiquity, like objects which from their great distance are scarcely perceptible, as also because in those times the use of letters, the only faithful guardian of the memory of events, was inconsiderable and rare: and, moreover, whatever was contained in the commentaries of the pontiffs, and other public and private records, were lost for the most part in the burning of the city.
The moderate section of the aristocracy, with the Valerii and Horatii at their head, are said to have attempted in the senate to compel the abdication of the decemvirate; but the head of the decemvirs Appius Claudius, originally a rigid aristocrat, but now changing into a demagogue and a tyrant, gained the ascendancy in the senate, and the people submitted.
Still the decemvirs refused to lay down their power; then the army with its tribunes appeared in the city, and encamped on the Aventine.
The "Decemvirs" had now destroyed the most illustrious advocates of constitutional monarchy and of republican liberty. The slaughter of their old friends now followed. The first victim was Danton himself, who had used his influence to put a stop to the bloody executions which then disgraced the country, and had recognized the existence of a God and the rights of humanity.
To the calamities received from the enemy, the decemvirs add two flagitious deeds, one abroad, and the other in the city.
There, the chief pontiff holding the meeting for the elections, they immediately elected as their tribunes of the people, first of all Lucius Verginius, then Lucius Icilius, and Publius Numitorius, the uncle of Verginius, who had recommended the secession: then Gaius Sicinius, the offspring of him who is recorded to have been elected first tribune of the commons on the Sacred Mount; and Marcus Duillius, who had held a distinguished tribuneship before the appointment of the decemvirs, and never failed the commons in their contests with the decemvirs.
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