Of course the Clauclii of this period were, like the rest of the clans of the high nobility, generally found in the
conservative
camp; yet no notable champion of the oligarchy appeared among them, while there were various men who professed oppositional sentiments or milder
_views leaning to the popular side.
_views leaning to the popular side.
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APPENDIX
whom cherished a deeper interest in philology and archaeology than is common with princely dilettanti.
It will be allowed that neither of these observations tells exactly in favour of the current view of the Claudian family. The aristocratic party at all times set a higher value on martial prowess than on mental gifts; democracy on the contrary, and above all the Roman democracy down to a late age, sought its sphere in the Forum beyond the reach of the sword, and found powerful levers in science and art. How is all this reconcilahle with the familia ruperbim'ma a: :rudelirn'ma in plebs! » Romanam? And various other considerations might be adduced. The statement that the Claudii only migrated to Rome in the sixth year after the expulsion of the kings is not merely untrust worthy as to date, but decidedly at variance with the requirements of republican state law; moreover the Claudian gem, which gave in name to a Roman tribe, and which appears at an early date in the Fasti, cannot possibly have migrated to Rome at so recent I. period. But, apart from the date, the fact itself of the migration of the Claudii from Sabina is attested by a highly credible family tradition ; and it is a surprising circumstance that this same patrician clan, which was almost the only one to preserve and to value the recollection of its having come from abroad, should have furnished the champion of the native patrieians. The Claudii, too, were almost the only patrician gem which had a counterpart of the same name and of kindred origin among the old plebeian nobility ;1 for that more than a mere nominal kinship was assumed to exist between the patrician Claudii and the plebeian Marcelli, is attested by the competing claims of the two houses in the case of heritages passing to gentiles (Cic. dc
Oral. i. 39, 176). One would think that this relation must have con ltituted a connecting bond between the patrician Claudii and the plebs rather than the reverse.
But general considerations of this sort do not determine the matter. The question depends on the political position which the prominent men of the Claudian gen: took up, and by which they determined that of the whole clan, so far as in the case of the latter we can speak of such a position at all. Now of such prominent men the Claudian clan in the earlier centuries of the republic produced two,—-Appius the Decemvir and Appius the Censor : of the other Claudii of this epoch we know, laying aside idle inventions, just about. as much as we know of the Egyptian kings-their names and their years of ofiice. We shall have to treat accordingly in the first instance of the two former, and then to subjoin what is to be said regarding the far less important Claudii of later regular history.
The accounts given in the annals which have reached us regarding the Ap. Claudius who was consul in 283 and decemvir in 303 can certainly make no claim to historical credibility, and are still more corrupted and disfigured than other accounts of the same epoch. Authors, who record under the year 284 the death of the man who was decemvir twenty years afterwards, will receive credit from nobody
I ‘lhe Veturii alone were in the same position.
APPENDIX
.
when they report his speeches in the Forum and the senate and the history of his impeachment. Yet the most important facts relating to the origin of the Twelve Tables are as little doubtful as the Twelve Tables themselves; and in this case it is not difficult to separate a historical kernel from the loose tissue of fable. First of all, it is clear and undisputed that the committal of the public law to writing was a measure directed against the patrician magistrates and consequently against the patrician government itself. Moreover, it is no less certain that the decemvirs were not all patricians. For, if there is anything good and reliable in what has been handed down to us, the list of magistrates is so; and we know also the patrician clans suihciently to be certain that, while the decemvirs first nominated were all patricians, of those elected in 304 at least the three described by Dionysius (x. 58) as plebeian, and probably two others-or, in other words, one-half— were plebeians. The circumstance that Livy in his narrative itself says nothing of the quality of the members of this college, and afterwards in a speech (iv. 3) calls all the decemvirs patricians, is of no moment. Niebuhr, who did not fail to see the conclusive force of the evidence in favour of the plebeian character of a portion of the second decemvirs,‘ supposed (and Schwegler assents to his view) that the first and second decemvirate were different in kind,-the former being an extraordinary
. legislative commission, the latter a college of archons organized as a permanent institution and composed of both orders. But this hypothesis is opposed to all tradition, as well as to all probability ; the two sets of magistrates occurring in so close succession, both occupied with the preparation of the legal code, and both comprehended under the same title decemvirs’ conrulari imperio legibus scribundi: in the roll of magistrates, must have been in constitutional law homogeneous. Consequently nothing remains but the hypothesis that the decemvirate stood open from the first to both orders; and this view is necessarily demanded by the analogy of the military tribunate camulari potzrtale. For the essential features-the substitution of a larger number of rragistrates for the pair, and the assigning to these magistrates not the I tie and rank of consul with the relative honours (right to celebrate a
iumph and to carry images of ancestors), but only delegated consular I)ower—are common to the military tribunate and the decemvirate; and, as the military tribunate was notoriously organized in this way just in order to make the supreme magistracy, but not the highest honours of that magistracy, accessible to the plebeians, the decemvirate cannot well be conceived otherwise than common from the first to both orders. The fact that the first college consisted exclusively of patricians is not inconsistent with this hypothesis, but agreeable to all analogy ; the military tribunate in like manner, although always common in law, remained practically for many years in the hands of the patricians. Lastly, Livy himself narrates the course of the matter as if the plebs had demanded at first a commission composed of plebeians, and then one in which the two orders were to be mixed (iii. 9, 5 ; iii. 31, 7 plzlm'az lager), and yet the ten commissioners were at last chosen from the patricians: plant craari deumviror-admfl
499
500
APPENDIX
cermturm plain-r‘, mntrm/erria ah'quama'iu fin'l; poriremo couters-um patribur, made us [ex la'lia dc Aventine alituque sacratae legs: almzgarmlur (iii. 31). It is easy to see how the older view has here
been not really altered, but merely obscured by the omission of the circumstance that the plebeians carried their demand for the appoint ment of a mixed magistracy. What was true of the election, viz. , that patricians only were fixed upon, was erroneously referred to the institution itself—an error which might be the more readily excused, as the point related not to a magistracy that was often to recur, but to a college which was to finish within its year of office the compilation of the code for which preparations had long been making, and con sequently was to be elected only once.
Ifwe reflect on these surely-established facts, first, that the obtain ing of a written body of law was in itself a severe defeat of the nobility, and secondly, that men of both orders might be and were placed on the legislative commission and the eligibility of the plebeians to the supreme magistracy was in its case first legally and practically recognized, it is plainly preposterous to make the head of the decemvirate the leader of the patrician party. This, however, is what Livy has done; but that the older annals, characterized by 165 of literary taste and by a more vivid realization of the matters which they narrate, did not give any such version, may be proved from his own pages. He introduces his narrative of the second decemvirate by the remark that a. new spirit had possessed Appius and the furious patrician had all at once become a mob-courtier (plebimla, iii. 33)» that, surrounded by the leading men of the plebs, the Duellii and Icilii, he had appeared in the Forum, and had by vile demagogic arts carried his re-election for the next year and the nomination of men of little standing as his colleagues (iii. 36). By this view Livy thence forth abides on the whole, although he now and again falls back on the earlier, representing the decemvirs for instance as afterwards appearing with a retinue of young patricians and perpetrating their deeds of violence under its protection (iii. 37). This new spirit, which is alleged to have strangely taken possession of Appius at the close of 303, is evidently none other than that which ha been eliminated from his character by the misrepresentations of later historians but is ascribed to him by the earlier annals generally, and alone befits the part that he played—the spirit of a patrician demagogue who ends as a tyrant to patricians as well as plebeians. How much in the story of his fall is historical, and what may have been the real incidents of the process of Verg'inia—the murder of Siccius seems to have been a late addition-cannot of course be ascertained, and is a matter of comparative indifference; but the import of that story of Verginia, given in Diodorus and consequently proceeding from Fabius, may be easily perceived, and is significant enough, even should it be an invention. The unjust judicial sentence pronounced in his own personal interest, not in that of his order, the coming forward of the complaisant accommodating retainer, the greedy lust from which the burgher-maiden only saves her honour in death—
APPENDIX
50!
these are all well-known traits in the picture of the ancient tyrannu. r , and, in fact, the charge of usurping the tyrannir is brought up very distinctly in many passages by Livy against the second decemvirs generally (iii. 36 ; deem regum speaks arm‘, 0. 32; I'd 112m rzg‘num baud dubie videri, c. 39; a’eznn Tarquim'nr. The emperor Claudius also speaks of decemm'rale regnum on the Lyons Tables, i. 33). There was certainly good reason also for placing the demagogic gms of the Icilii in the foreground both at the second election of Appius and at the catastrophe. The oldest annals, written in a patrician spirit, showed at this point-when they were compelled to relate the momentous victory of the plebs over the nobility-by an instructive example, what fruit the people themselves derived from such a success of the popular party; how every demagogue naturally turns into a tyrant ; how the honest plebeian, who had helped to place Appius in the judgment seat, himself suffered most at the hands of the judge; and how the plebs, thoroughly cured of its blindness by such consequences of its own act, took up arms against the self-constituted tyrant, was brought back by its true aristocratic protectors, the Valerii and Horatii, to that old constitution which could alone give happiness, and at length received from them as a free gift the real prize for which the plebs had contended, but which the demagogues who had turned tyrants had neglected to confer-the completion of the legal code. This no doubt is not history; but it approaches nearer to the reality
than the well-written but ill-concocted epida'xir of Livy.
Respectingr Appius Claudius Caecus, censor in 442, consul in 447
and 458, the accounts are both more trustworthy and more copious. Niebuhr has already formed a judgment substantially correct regarding him, and I have in my History of Rome given a short sketch of him, in the main outlines of which I have no occasion to make any change, although, in consequence of my not then possessing an insight into the very peculiar character of the traditional accounts of the Claudii, there are various misapprehensions in the details. He was not only no representative of conservative tendencies, but a decided revolutionist, although he employed the forms and handles furnished by the con stitution for the purpose of overthrowing it. Let us briefly review the accounts handed down in regard to him. First of all, the story of his blindness has perhaps arisen solely from the misunderstanding of a surname‘ That the current story, which represents him as struck with blindness by Hercules on account of a sacrilegious offence committed in his censorship of 442, is absurd in reference to a man who was twice afterwards consul, has long been seen; and it is also evident that the version of Diodorus (xx. 1o), according to which he feigned himself blind in order that he might have a suitable pretext for keeping aloof from the senate which was hostile to him, is simply a second absurdity which has arisen out of a perception of the first. The view now usually adopted, that Appius had grown blind in his old age, is inconsistent with the Capitoline Fasti, which already under
442 register him as Ap. Claudiur C. j: Ap. n. Caecus ; for, as they distinctly specify surnames acquired after entering on oflice as such
50, APPENDIX
(recording, for instance, in the very case of his colleague, C. Plautiu: C. f. C. n. qui in lwc honor: Vmx appzllatur at), their compilers appear to have regarded Canur as a simple cognomen, and the fact of his being blind at all is thus rendered doubtful. It is possible, indeed, that they may either have fallen into an error or may have wished in this way to avoid those absurdities of the older annals, and that the current hypothesis may still be the truth ; certainty is not on such a question to be attained.
Of the martial deeds of Appius there is little to tell. Although he was once dictator, twice consul, and twice praetor, and took the field against the Samnites and Etruscans, and although his activity fell within the epoch of Rome's greatest military glory, yet he never triumphed. He built a temple to Bellona; but it is well known that man not unfrequently pays the most zealous homage to the divinity that seems him. The really significant activity of Appius belongs to the field of civil life. In particular, that speech of the venerable old man who had long retired from all state affairs, which vanquished the first Greek diplomatist that appeared in the Roman senate, and at :1 decisive moment gave fresh courage and power to the Roman govern ment-the speech against Pyrrhus—remained indelibly engraven on the memory of posterity. This result was partly due to the fact that it was the first speech which, so far as we know, was committed to writing in Rome—at least Cicero, who read had no doubt of its genuineness. Nor have we any reason to regard his poetical “ say ings” (senlenh'ae), which Panaetius had read, as spurious; they were maxims of general nature, such as that “ he who gets sight of friend forgets his grief” (Prise. viii. I8), and the well-known saying, "every one the architect of his own fortune ” (Sallust, d: On]. Rep.
I); when Cicero called them Pythagorean, he was undoubtedly thinking of the pseudo-Pythagorean “ Golden Words,” and this oldest Latin poem must in fact have been formed under the influence of such Greek collections. He said also to have introduced the practice of writing the r between two vowels instead of the earlier (Dig. 2, 2, 36), and to have banished the use of a,1 doubtless bringing the writing into conformity with the pronunciation. The same bold and far-seeing spirit of innovation, which discernible in his literary activity, marks also his political career; and remarkable how he in this respect walks in the steps of his great-great-grandfather, the decemvir. The publication of the Iegis actianer, which was carried out by his clerk Cn. Flavius, beyond all doubt at his suggestion-by some indeed was attributed to himself (Dig, :. )-was virtually the publication of
revised and enlarged code. The Twelve Tables, indeed, were in substance regulation of civil procedure; and the object in both cases, as in all similar instances, was to emancipate the humble burgess from dependence on the caprice of the aristocratic magistrate and on
Man, Cap. 26:, Kopp. : : idn'nro Appius Claudius detestalur, quad dentn mar-Mi dun: uprr'mitur /'milalur, where we should perhaps read dnctis norm. A pius, probable, only assigned (or was alleged to have assigned) thi: as reason or the banishment of the from the language and writing.
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APPENDIX
503
the advice of the no less aristocratic men of lore, by means of a written code accessible to all. The same remark applies to the Fasti, which at that time were still in the main what the name indicates, a list of court days: as the calendar had been an integral part of the Twelve Tables, it now became a part of the legal directory of Flavius, and was diti'used along with the latter in the form of a book.
A mere notice may suflice for the innovations of Appius in ritual matters; viz. , the transference of the public worship of Hercules in the Forum Boarium from the gm: of the Potitii to the charge of public slaves, and the ejection of the guild of libicines from the temple of Jupiter, which in the following year led to the well-known quarrel so happily ended by the jocose diplomatic intervention of the Tihnrtinea and the yielding of the senate. 5‘
The conversion of the burgess-qualification hitherto in force from landed property into a money-rating was materially modified by the successor of Appius in the censorship, the great Quintus Fabius; but
enough of his innovations remained both as regards the mmitia tributa and the comitia cantun‘ata, but more especially the latter, to associate the censorship of Appius with perhaps the most material constitutional change which ever took place in republican Rome. The nomination of sons of freedmen as senators, the omission to purge the senatorial and equestrian rolls of disreputable and infamous individuals, and the election, at the suggestion of Appius, of his clerk Cn. Flavius the son of a freedman to a curule oflice; the spending of the moneys
accumulated in the treasury, without the previous sanction of the senate, on magnificent structures called-a thing hitherto unheard of —at'ter the builder's name; the Appian aqueduct and the Appian highway; lastly, his prolongation of the censorship beyond the legal term of eighteen months; are each and all measures diametrically opposed to Roman conservatism and to Roman reverence for the constitution and for use and wont, and belonging to the most advanced demagogism-measures which savour more of Cleisthenes and Periclm than of a statesman of the Roman commonwealth. “Such a character," Niebuhr aptly remarks, “would not surprise us in the history of Greece; in that of Rome it appears very strange. ” It is not my intention at present to do more than merely to indicate these several undertakings of Appius, which in general are sufiiciently well known, and which could not be adequately estimated without
lengthened and minute explanation. I shall only advert to a general opinion regarding the character of his proceedings in the censorship, and to an isolated notice which has not hitherto been correctly apprehended. The opinion to which I refer is that of Fabius, pre served by Diodorus (xx. 36). He says under the year 444-5, “ One of the censors of this year, Appius Claudius, on whom his colleague was entirely dependent, disturbed many matters of use and wont, for, gratifying the multitude, he troubled himself little about the senate. " The notice to which I refer occurs in Suetonius (Tib. 2). In enumerating the injuries done by the Claudii to the commonwealth, he "lays, Claudius Drurur, rlatua . Irr'bi riiadunata ad Appi Forum parita,
504
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Italian: percb'enlelar ormpare temptam‘t. According to the order in which this statement occurs, it falls between the decemvirate and the first Punic war. It has at all times, and very justly, excited extreme suspicion; few perhaps will be inclined with Niebuhr to hold simply as stands, as historical, and to see in this Claudius Drnsus an otherwise totally unknown tyrant of Italy. The name in fact demonstrably corrupt, not only because Claudii Druri do not occur elsewhere, but more especially because Suetonius after discussing the paternal ancestors of the emperor Tiberius passes on to the maternal and treats minutely of the Lir/ii Druri and of the origin of that
He could not but have noticed so singular a coincidence of the two families in the possession of cognomen anything but frequent, had that name of Claudius Drusus been the real one while on the other hand the subsequent occurrence of the cognomen Drusus might lead copyist to anticipate at the wrong place. How the passage should be amended, know not in point of fact beyond all doubt no other can be meant here but Appius Caecus; for he not only falls in point of time exactly within the requisite epoch and is the only one of all the Claudii against whom such a charge as that indicated by Suetonius rationally conceivable, but the Forum Appii, the present Foro Appio between Treponti and Terracina not far from
Sena, was itself, like the Appian way, work of his-situated in the middle of that immense embankment of hewn stone carried across the Pomptine marshes, in the construction of which, as Diodorus says, Appius exhausted the treasure of the state and left an eternal monu ment to his name. To him alone could the idea occur of having statue erected to himself at this otherwise inconsiderable place; and
further easy to understand how the-at that time novel-institu tion of a market village along the highway, and the naming of after its originator, might give rise to the allegation that its founder designed to bring all Italy under his power by forming client-com munities. Valerius Maximus also assigns to Caecus plurimar rh'enlzla: (viii. r3, 5).
The portrait of Caecus, as has just been sketched, delineated in our tradition in strong, clear, mutually harmonious lines. At the same time must be added that strictly suits only Appius as censor in the two consulships which he held after his censorship and in his other later activity we encounter nothing more of that vehemently revolutionary spirit. must probably be assumed that he himself in his later years abandoned the career on which he had entered at first, and became reconciled in some measure to the existing conservative government-if not, we do not see how he could have ended otherwise than like the Gracchi or like Caesar. But though this be granted,
clear that Appius Caecus was not, any more than the decemvir Appius, an appropriate representative of the strict aristocratic party; and Livy,
when he treats Caecus in this light, has certainly assigned to him part most incongruous to his character. Itis necessary, not in ordu
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APPENDIX 50;
to complete our view of Caecus, but in order to perceive the character of Livy and of that mode of writing history which he represents, that we should dwell for a moment on the false colours with which this Claudius like all the rest has been overlaid. I do not include in this category the statement that the builder of the temple of Bellona placed in it the escutcheons of his ancestors with a list of the curule otiices filled by each (Plin. H. 1V. xxxv. 3, I2, where this is erroneously referred to the consul of 259); aristocratic pride is very compatible with the character of a Pericles, and Caesar with all his demagogism boasted of his descent from Venus. But the view given of the censor ship of Appius, as we read it in Livy (ix. 29, 3o, 33, 34), is very strange, not so much on account of the occasional attacks on the "inborn arrogance” of the Claudii, “that family destined by fate to quarrel with the plebs” (ix. 29, 33), as because all his palpably demagogic measures are passed over in silence-a silence which is the more evidently intentional, seeing that the most important of these, the
enrolment of persons who had no landed property in the tribes, is afterwards mentioned incidentally under the censorship of Fabius (x. 7). It is no less remarkable that Livy (x. 15) represents Appius Caecus as again heading the opposition to the Ogulnian law of 454, which abolished the last substantial privilege of the patricians as respected the great priestly colleges; and here, at the close of the whole strife between the orders, once more contrasts him as the incarnation of patricianism with the figure of the pure plebeian hero Decius Mus. Nor is this even enough. At the consular elections for 485 the same Appius is said to have attempted unconstitutionally to bring in a second patrician, Q. Fabius Rullianus, as consul along with himself, and the project is said to have been thwarted solely by the loyal magnanimity of the said Fabius (x. 15). A different, but analogous story in given by Cicero (Brut. I4, 55) ; according to which Caecus in the capacity of interrex presiding at the elections (he filled this otlice according to Livy, x. 11, in 45 5—on which occasion, how
ever, as the first interrex he could not have conducted the election and according to his elagium on two other occasions unknown to us) is said to have rejected the votes given for a plebeian consular candidate, and thus to have led the tribune of the people, M’. Curius, to propose a further restriction of patrician privileges. That these evidently kindred stories are highly incredible, is plain to every one conversant with the matter; how is it possible that, at a time when the patricians had been divested almost without resistance of the last privileges of
their order, and when the plebeians had had their title to share in the consulship not only constitutionally secured ever since men could remember, but also long confirmed by usage, the idea of such a restoration should have entered the mind of a mature statesman? And these accounts, in themselves more than suspicious, are coupled with the names of men than whom none could have been selected more unsuitable. The crazy patrician, who brings forward those prepos terous projects, is no other than the censorial demagogne Appius Caecus who was for good reasons at bitterest feud with the ruling con
506
APPENDIX
servative party; and the person, whom he unconstitntionally selects as his colleague for 458, is no other than Fabius Rullianus,. who had checked the unbounded demagogism of Appius on succeeding him in the censorship. We might be disposed to recognize in this one of those singular political conversions which have occurred at various epochs in the history of the world. But, as abrupt transition from one party extreme to another and renegade arrogance have at no time been regarded as specially honourable, and as so much is said about Caecus more especially in the way of censure, such a change of sides, which must have produced the greatest sensation, would certainly have been prominently noticed in the accounts. But we nowhere meet with any hint of the sort : on the contrary, we have seen even the censorship of Appius, clearly as it bears on the face of it the stamp of demagogism, divested as far as possible of any such character in the narrative of Livy. To this falls to be added the spirit of perversion and invention hostile to the Claudii, noticed at the outset as pervading the older annals generally. The delineation of the character of Caecus- towards whom the ninth and tenth books of Livy exhibit various traces of an altogether peculiar hatred-cannot be separated from the history of the trial and suicide of Appius Claudius, consul in 283, as told by Dionysius and Livy, which has been demonstrated to be a pure lie foreign to the earlier annals by the mention of the same man in the Capitoline Fasti twenty years later; from those constantly recurring consular and senatorial speeches of Claudii hostile to the people ; from that irrational misrepresentation of the decemvir; or, generally, from
the whole class of anti-Claudian stories. Nothing remains accordingly but the hypothesis that the anti-popular anecdotes attached to the demagogue Caecus—turning, it may be remarked, throughout on easily invented trifles and nowhere ati'ecting his leading and well-known actions-have been designedly perverted or invented.
It thus appears that at a pretty early period a pencil not merely hostile generally to the Claudii, but specially assailing them as the hereditary foes of progress and of democracy, has been at work in the Roman annals, and has caricatured" its portraits with more good-will than judgment. Who it was that wielded can only be guessed inferentially. That the earliest_annalists, and Fabius in particular, knew nothing of these lies, clear from what w. have said above. Ofij the other hand they cannot‘well'have originated with Livy; this far from honourable species of libel concealing itself under the falsifying
documents by no means consistent with the morally pure character is’ work, and besides there was-‘no ostensible ground for in his
For, when Livy wrote theitirst ‘decad', there remained no man bf‘hote belonging to the main 'stock of the patrician Claudii, and pi'obably none of them remained at all except the son of P. Clodius,
was utterly insignificant and was ruining himself by reckless debauchery; the collateral branch of the Nerones was then obscure, Tiberius the future emperor was still boy. Further, far from credible that Dionysius, whose books are evidently pervaded
same tendency, and who professes to give us antidemocratic
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APPENDIX sq
of the Claudii even in numerous cases when Livy is silent, should have in this matter rested solely on Livy and invented in a similar spirit what he did not find there. Besides, if the notice in Cicero’s Brutus has been correctly estimated above, this series“of falsifications must have already existed in Cicero's time; but the Claudian arrogance" was certainly not yet at that time generally recognized and familiar, otherwise assuredly Cicero would not have allowed so suitable a handle for invective against his mortal enemy Clodius wholly to escape him. I,astly, these falsifications bear on the face of them the stamp of a democratic origin. Putting together all these indications, we may at all events suggest a name to which the suspicion of having set afloat these plebeian libels on the Claudian house may not without warrant be attached. It is that of Licinius Macer. Macer was, as is well known, a contemporary of Cicero, senior to him by a few years (tribune of the people in 68! , he died, after having served the praetorship, in 688), a notorious democrat and the author of ill written and not much read annals, which however, it can be shown, formed a main authority both with Livy and with Dionysius. I have shown in
my Clrronalagie that this man, who had been legally condemned for extortion and probably on that account committed suicide, was not only a thief, but at the same time a thoroughly shameless falsifier. It is true that nothing is known of any special quarrel between him and the patrician Claudii; but all the latter were, in the period of Sulla
and the subsequent times, in the oligarchic camp and most decidedly
opposed to Macer and his party, and we may perhaps even point out . the individual who specially attracted the hatred of the democrats.
Few of the acts of Gains Claudius consul in 662 are recorded ; but his extraordinary influence in the state is more than once (Cic. pro Plane. 2! , 5t, Brut. 45, I66) prominently referred to in so striking a manner, that we may certainly recognize him as one of the leaders of the senate at this time, and one who may be presumed accordingly to have been specially obnoxious to the party of progress.
Until further investigation shall confirm or remove this suspicion resting on the credibility of Macer and the annalists who derived their accounts from him, we may be allowed to regard it as a reason for cautiously receiving whatever is connected with his authority, especially seeing that it affects a man whose reputation is not thereby rendered worse than it is already.
It remains that we cast a glance at the Claudii of the later purely historical times, and their political position. This, however, need not detain us long. For that there was no clan-policy at all in the sense which not a few modern historians associate with the term, the inquiry which we have just concluded shows by an instructive example; the far-famed Claudian policy would seem, from that review, to have been nothing else than a caricature invented by a partisan falsifier of history.
In the sixth and seventh centuries the Claudii had no remarkable
the good and bad qualities which pretty uniformly marked the Roman oligarchy characterized them also, and there are few of the numerous men of this family known to us in the later times
prominence;
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APPENDIX
of the republic, as to whom we can tell more than their names and titles.
Of course the Clauclii of this period were, like the rest of the clans of the high nobility, generally found in the conservative camp; yet no notable champion of the oligarchy appeared among them, while there were various men who professed oppositional sentiments or milder
_views leaning to the popular side. This is especially the ease with all those, of whose characters any sketches or even any isolated vivid traits have been preserved. The well-known stories regarding P. Pulcher consul in the first Punic war, who audaciously killed the sacred fowls at Drepana and, in defiance of the senate, nominated Glicia his former clerk as dictator, indicate great insolence doubtless, but not aristocratic arrogance; they rather betoken that pride which disregards traditional views and class-prejudices and is in fact truly democratic. In the nomination of Glicia, which excited the utmost horror in all genuine patricians for centuries, he was, beyond doubt, influenced by the recollection that his ancestor Caecus had introduced his clerk Flavius into the senate. C. Pulcher, when censor in 585, prevented his colleague Ti. Gracchus from depriving the freedmen by censorial authority of their right of suffrage, because, as he afl-irmed, none could be deprived of that right without a decree of the people (Liv. xlv. ! 5)—-a course which was very proper and highly com mendable, but not specially oligarchic. Appius Claudius, consul in 61! , is known as one of the most conspicuous promoters of the agitation of the Gracchi ; he himself along with the two Gracchi, the elder of whom was his son-in-law, presided over the execution of the scheme of reform as a commissioner for the distribution of lands. As to the tribune of the people P. Clodius, the adopted son of the plebeian Fonteius, it is hardly necessary to prove that he at least was no pearl of conservatism. If, therefore, the very moderate measure of historical truth and importance, which lies at the root of the hypothesis of a hereditary family policy, is to be in future brought to bear on the case of the Claudii, it will be well at least utterly to abandon the current tradition, and to regard this patrician house not as the defenders of an obdurate aristocracy, but as the predecessors of the Gracchi and of Caesar. In this respect the Claudii were justly called to ascend, in combination with the Julian house, the imperial throne, and even on that throne they did not wholly forget the traditional policy of their clan; for it is only in the light of that traditional policy that we can rightly understand why Tiberius and Claudius declined the title of
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whom cherished a deeper interest in philology and archaeology than is common with princely dilettanti.
It will be allowed that neither of these observations tells exactly in favour of the current view of the Claudian family. The aristocratic party at all times set a higher value on martial prowess than on mental gifts; democracy on the contrary, and above all the Roman democracy down to a late age, sought its sphere in the Forum beyond the reach of the sword, and found powerful levers in science and art. How is all this reconcilahle with the familia ruperbim'ma a: :rudelirn'ma in plebs! » Romanam? And various other considerations might be adduced. The statement that the Claudii only migrated to Rome in the sixth year after the expulsion of the kings is not merely untrust worthy as to date, but decidedly at variance with the requirements of republican state law; moreover the Claudian gem, which gave in name to a Roman tribe, and which appears at an early date in the Fasti, cannot possibly have migrated to Rome at so recent I. period. But, apart from the date, the fact itself of the migration of the Claudii from Sabina is attested by a highly credible family tradition ; and it is a surprising circumstance that this same patrician clan, which was almost the only one to preserve and to value the recollection of its having come from abroad, should have furnished the champion of the native patrieians. The Claudii, too, were almost the only patrician gem which had a counterpart of the same name and of kindred origin among the old plebeian nobility ;1 for that more than a mere nominal kinship was assumed to exist between the patrician Claudii and the plebeian Marcelli, is attested by the competing claims of the two houses in the case of heritages passing to gentiles (Cic. dc
Oral. i. 39, 176). One would think that this relation must have con ltituted a connecting bond between the patrician Claudii and the plebs rather than the reverse.
But general considerations of this sort do not determine the matter. The question depends on the political position which the prominent men of the Claudian gen: took up, and by which they determined that of the whole clan, so far as in the case of the latter we can speak of such a position at all. Now of such prominent men the Claudian clan in the earlier centuries of the republic produced two,—-Appius the Decemvir and Appius the Censor : of the other Claudii of this epoch we know, laying aside idle inventions, just about. as much as we know of the Egyptian kings-their names and their years of ofiice. We shall have to treat accordingly in the first instance of the two former, and then to subjoin what is to be said regarding the far less important Claudii of later regular history.
The accounts given in the annals which have reached us regarding the Ap. Claudius who was consul in 283 and decemvir in 303 can certainly make no claim to historical credibility, and are still more corrupted and disfigured than other accounts of the same epoch. Authors, who record under the year 284 the death of the man who was decemvir twenty years afterwards, will receive credit from nobody
I ‘lhe Veturii alone were in the same position.
APPENDIX
.
when they report his speeches in the Forum and the senate and the history of his impeachment. Yet the most important facts relating to the origin of the Twelve Tables are as little doubtful as the Twelve Tables themselves; and in this case it is not difficult to separate a historical kernel from the loose tissue of fable. First of all, it is clear and undisputed that the committal of the public law to writing was a measure directed against the patrician magistrates and consequently against the patrician government itself. Moreover, it is no less certain that the decemvirs were not all patricians. For, if there is anything good and reliable in what has been handed down to us, the list of magistrates is so; and we know also the patrician clans suihciently to be certain that, while the decemvirs first nominated were all patricians, of those elected in 304 at least the three described by Dionysius (x. 58) as plebeian, and probably two others-or, in other words, one-half— were plebeians. The circumstance that Livy in his narrative itself says nothing of the quality of the members of this college, and afterwards in a speech (iv. 3) calls all the decemvirs patricians, is of no moment. Niebuhr, who did not fail to see the conclusive force of the evidence in favour of the plebeian character of a portion of the second decemvirs,‘ supposed (and Schwegler assents to his view) that the first and second decemvirate were different in kind,-the former being an extraordinary
. legislative commission, the latter a college of archons organized as a permanent institution and composed of both orders. But this hypothesis is opposed to all tradition, as well as to all probability ; the two sets of magistrates occurring in so close succession, both occupied with the preparation of the legal code, and both comprehended under the same title decemvirs’ conrulari imperio legibus scribundi: in the roll of magistrates, must have been in constitutional law homogeneous. Consequently nothing remains but the hypothesis that the decemvirate stood open from the first to both orders; and this view is necessarily demanded by the analogy of the military tribunate camulari potzrtale. For the essential features-the substitution of a larger number of rragistrates for the pair, and the assigning to these magistrates not the I tie and rank of consul with the relative honours (right to celebrate a
iumph and to carry images of ancestors), but only delegated consular I)ower—are common to the military tribunate and the decemvirate; and, as the military tribunate was notoriously organized in this way just in order to make the supreme magistracy, but not the highest honours of that magistracy, accessible to the plebeians, the decemvirate cannot well be conceived otherwise than common from the first to both orders. The fact that the first college consisted exclusively of patricians is not inconsistent with this hypothesis, but agreeable to all analogy ; the military tribunate in like manner, although always common in law, remained practically for many years in the hands of the patricians. Lastly, Livy himself narrates the course of the matter as if the plebs had demanded at first a commission composed of plebeians, and then one in which the two orders were to be mixed (iii. 9, 5 ; iii. 31, 7 plzlm'az lager), and yet the ten commissioners were at last chosen from the patricians: plant craari deumviror-admfl
499
500
APPENDIX
cermturm plain-r‘, mntrm/erria ah'quama'iu fin'l; poriremo couters-um patribur, made us [ex la'lia dc Aventine alituque sacratae legs: almzgarmlur (iii. 31). It is easy to see how the older view has here
been not really altered, but merely obscured by the omission of the circumstance that the plebeians carried their demand for the appoint ment of a mixed magistracy. What was true of the election, viz. , that patricians only were fixed upon, was erroneously referred to the institution itself—an error which might be the more readily excused, as the point related not to a magistracy that was often to recur, but to a college which was to finish within its year of office the compilation of the code for which preparations had long been making, and con sequently was to be elected only once.
Ifwe reflect on these surely-established facts, first, that the obtain ing of a written body of law was in itself a severe defeat of the nobility, and secondly, that men of both orders might be and were placed on the legislative commission and the eligibility of the plebeians to the supreme magistracy was in its case first legally and practically recognized, it is plainly preposterous to make the head of the decemvirate the leader of the patrician party. This, however, is what Livy has done; but that the older annals, characterized by 165 of literary taste and by a more vivid realization of the matters which they narrate, did not give any such version, may be proved from his own pages. He introduces his narrative of the second decemvirate by the remark that a. new spirit had possessed Appius and the furious patrician had all at once become a mob-courtier (plebimla, iii. 33)» that, surrounded by the leading men of the plebs, the Duellii and Icilii, he had appeared in the Forum, and had by vile demagogic arts carried his re-election for the next year and the nomination of men of little standing as his colleagues (iii. 36). By this view Livy thence forth abides on the whole, although he now and again falls back on the earlier, representing the decemvirs for instance as afterwards appearing with a retinue of young patricians and perpetrating their deeds of violence under its protection (iii. 37). This new spirit, which is alleged to have strangely taken possession of Appius at the close of 303, is evidently none other than that which ha been eliminated from his character by the misrepresentations of later historians but is ascribed to him by the earlier annals generally, and alone befits the part that he played—the spirit of a patrician demagogue who ends as a tyrant to patricians as well as plebeians. How much in the story of his fall is historical, and what may have been the real incidents of the process of Verg'inia—the murder of Siccius seems to have been a late addition-cannot of course be ascertained, and is a matter of comparative indifference; but the import of that story of Verginia, given in Diodorus and consequently proceeding from Fabius, may be easily perceived, and is significant enough, even should it be an invention. The unjust judicial sentence pronounced in his own personal interest, not in that of his order, the coming forward of the complaisant accommodating retainer, the greedy lust from which the burgher-maiden only saves her honour in death—
APPENDIX
50!
these are all well-known traits in the picture of the ancient tyrannu. r , and, in fact, the charge of usurping the tyrannir is brought up very distinctly in many passages by Livy against the second decemvirs generally (iii. 36 ; deem regum speaks arm‘, 0. 32; I'd 112m rzg‘num baud dubie videri, c. 39; a’eznn Tarquim'nr. The emperor Claudius also speaks of decemm'rale regnum on the Lyons Tables, i. 33). There was certainly good reason also for placing the demagogic gms of the Icilii in the foreground both at the second election of Appius and at the catastrophe. The oldest annals, written in a patrician spirit, showed at this point-when they were compelled to relate the momentous victory of the plebs over the nobility-by an instructive example, what fruit the people themselves derived from such a success of the popular party; how every demagogue naturally turns into a tyrant ; how the honest plebeian, who had helped to place Appius in the judgment seat, himself suffered most at the hands of the judge; and how the plebs, thoroughly cured of its blindness by such consequences of its own act, took up arms against the self-constituted tyrant, was brought back by its true aristocratic protectors, the Valerii and Horatii, to that old constitution which could alone give happiness, and at length received from them as a free gift the real prize for which the plebs had contended, but which the demagogues who had turned tyrants had neglected to confer-the completion of the legal code. This no doubt is not history; but it approaches nearer to the reality
than the well-written but ill-concocted epida'xir of Livy.
Respectingr Appius Claudius Caecus, censor in 442, consul in 447
and 458, the accounts are both more trustworthy and more copious. Niebuhr has already formed a judgment substantially correct regarding him, and I have in my History of Rome given a short sketch of him, in the main outlines of which I have no occasion to make any change, although, in consequence of my not then possessing an insight into the very peculiar character of the traditional accounts of the Claudii, there are various misapprehensions in the details. He was not only no representative of conservative tendencies, but a decided revolutionist, although he employed the forms and handles furnished by the con stitution for the purpose of overthrowing it. Let us briefly review the accounts handed down in regard to him. First of all, the story of his blindness has perhaps arisen solely from the misunderstanding of a surname‘ That the current story, which represents him as struck with blindness by Hercules on account of a sacrilegious offence committed in his censorship of 442, is absurd in reference to a man who was twice afterwards consul, has long been seen; and it is also evident that the version of Diodorus (xx. 1o), according to which he feigned himself blind in order that he might have a suitable pretext for keeping aloof from the senate which was hostile to him, is simply a second absurdity which has arisen out of a perception of the first. The view now usually adopted, that Appius had grown blind in his old age, is inconsistent with the Capitoline Fasti, which already under
442 register him as Ap. Claudiur C. j: Ap. n. Caecus ; for, as they distinctly specify surnames acquired after entering on oflice as such
50, APPENDIX
(recording, for instance, in the very case of his colleague, C. Plautiu: C. f. C. n. qui in lwc honor: Vmx appzllatur at), their compilers appear to have regarded Canur as a simple cognomen, and the fact of his being blind at all is thus rendered doubtful. It is possible, indeed, that they may either have fallen into an error or may have wished in this way to avoid those absurdities of the older annals, and that the current hypothesis may still be the truth ; certainty is not on such a question to be attained.
Of the martial deeds of Appius there is little to tell. Although he was once dictator, twice consul, and twice praetor, and took the field against the Samnites and Etruscans, and although his activity fell within the epoch of Rome's greatest military glory, yet he never triumphed. He built a temple to Bellona; but it is well known that man not unfrequently pays the most zealous homage to the divinity that seems him. The really significant activity of Appius belongs to the field of civil life. In particular, that speech of the venerable old man who had long retired from all state affairs, which vanquished the first Greek diplomatist that appeared in the Roman senate, and at :1 decisive moment gave fresh courage and power to the Roman govern ment-the speech against Pyrrhus—remained indelibly engraven on the memory of posterity. This result was partly due to the fact that it was the first speech which, so far as we know, was committed to writing in Rome—at least Cicero, who read had no doubt of its genuineness. Nor have we any reason to regard his poetical “ say ings” (senlenh'ae), which Panaetius had read, as spurious; they were maxims of general nature, such as that “ he who gets sight of friend forgets his grief” (Prise. viii. I8), and the well-known saying, "every one the architect of his own fortune ” (Sallust, d: On]. Rep.
I); when Cicero called them Pythagorean, he was undoubtedly thinking of the pseudo-Pythagorean “ Golden Words,” and this oldest Latin poem must in fact have been formed under the influence of such Greek collections. He said also to have introduced the practice of writing the r between two vowels instead of the earlier (Dig. 2, 2, 36), and to have banished the use of a,1 doubtless bringing the writing into conformity with the pronunciation. The same bold and far-seeing spirit of innovation, which discernible in his literary activity, marks also his political career; and remarkable how he in this respect walks in the steps of his great-great-grandfather, the decemvir. The publication of the Iegis actianer, which was carried out by his clerk Cn. Flavius, beyond all doubt at his suggestion-by some indeed was attributed to himself (Dig, :. )-was virtually the publication of
revised and enlarged code. The Twelve Tables, indeed, were in substance regulation of civil procedure; and the object in both cases, as in all similar instances, was to emancipate the humble burgess from dependence on the caprice of the aristocratic magistrate and on
Man, Cap. 26:, Kopp. : : idn'nro Appius Claudius detestalur, quad dentn mar-Mi dun: uprr'mitur /'milalur, where we should perhaps read dnctis norm. A pius, probable, only assigned (or was alleged to have assigned) thi: as reason or the banishment of the from the language and writing.
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APPENDIX
503
the advice of the no less aristocratic men of lore, by means of a written code accessible to all. The same remark applies to the Fasti, which at that time were still in the main what the name indicates, a list of court days: as the calendar had been an integral part of the Twelve Tables, it now became a part of the legal directory of Flavius, and was diti'used along with the latter in the form of a book.
A mere notice may suflice for the innovations of Appius in ritual matters; viz. , the transference of the public worship of Hercules in the Forum Boarium from the gm: of the Potitii to the charge of public slaves, and the ejection of the guild of libicines from the temple of Jupiter, which in the following year led to the well-known quarrel so happily ended by the jocose diplomatic intervention of the Tihnrtinea and the yielding of the senate. 5‘
The conversion of the burgess-qualification hitherto in force from landed property into a money-rating was materially modified by the successor of Appius in the censorship, the great Quintus Fabius; but
enough of his innovations remained both as regards the mmitia tributa and the comitia cantun‘ata, but more especially the latter, to associate the censorship of Appius with perhaps the most material constitutional change which ever took place in republican Rome. The nomination of sons of freedmen as senators, the omission to purge the senatorial and equestrian rolls of disreputable and infamous individuals, and the election, at the suggestion of Appius, of his clerk Cn. Flavius the son of a freedman to a curule oflice; the spending of the moneys
accumulated in the treasury, without the previous sanction of the senate, on magnificent structures called-a thing hitherto unheard of —at'ter the builder's name; the Appian aqueduct and the Appian highway; lastly, his prolongation of the censorship beyond the legal term of eighteen months; are each and all measures diametrically opposed to Roman conservatism and to Roman reverence for the constitution and for use and wont, and belonging to the most advanced demagogism-measures which savour more of Cleisthenes and Periclm than of a statesman of the Roman commonwealth. “Such a character," Niebuhr aptly remarks, “would not surprise us in the history of Greece; in that of Rome it appears very strange. ” It is not my intention at present to do more than merely to indicate these several undertakings of Appius, which in general are sufiiciently well known, and which could not be adequately estimated without
lengthened and minute explanation. I shall only advert to a general opinion regarding the character of his proceedings in the censorship, and to an isolated notice which has not hitherto been correctly apprehended. The opinion to which I refer is that of Fabius, pre served by Diodorus (xx. 36). He says under the year 444-5, “ One of the censors of this year, Appius Claudius, on whom his colleague was entirely dependent, disturbed many matters of use and wont, for, gratifying the multitude, he troubled himself little about the senate. " The notice to which I refer occurs in Suetonius (Tib. 2). In enumerating the injuries done by the Claudii to the commonwealth, he "lays, Claudius Drurur, rlatua . Irr'bi riiadunata ad Appi Forum parita,
504
APPENDIX
Italian: percb'enlelar ormpare temptam‘t. According to the order in which this statement occurs, it falls between the decemvirate and the first Punic war. It has at all times, and very justly, excited extreme suspicion; few perhaps will be inclined with Niebuhr to hold simply as stands, as historical, and to see in this Claudius Drnsus an otherwise totally unknown tyrant of Italy. The name in fact demonstrably corrupt, not only because Claudii Druri do not occur elsewhere, but more especially because Suetonius after discussing the paternal ancestors of the emperor Tiberius passes on to the maternal and treats minutely of the Lir/ii Druri and of the origin of that
He could not but have noticed so singular a coincidence of the two families in the possession of cognomen anything but frequent, had that name of Claudius Drusus been the real one while on the other hand the subsequent occurrence of the cognomen Drusus might lead copyist to anticipate at the wrong place. How the passage should be amended, know not in point of fact beyond all doubt no other can be meant here but Appius Caecus; for he not only falls in point of time exactly within the requisite epoch and is the only one of all the Claudii against whom such a charge as that indicated by Suetonius rationally conceivable, but the Forum Appii, the present Foro Appio between Treponti and Terracina not far from
Sena, was itself, like the Appian way, work of his-situated in the middle of that immense embankment of hewn stone carried across the Pomptine marshes, in the construction of which, as Diodorus says, Appius exhausted the treasure of the state and left an eternal monu ment to his name. To him alone could the idea occur of having statue erected to himself at this otherwise inconsiderable place; and
further easy to understand how the-at that time novel-institu tion of a market village along the highway, and the naming of after its originator, might give rise to the allegation that its founder designed to bring all Italy under his power by forming client-com munities. Valerius Maximus also assigns to Caecus plurimar rh'enlzla: (viii. r3, 5).
The portrait of Caecus, as has just been sketched, delineated in our tradition in strong, clear, mutually harmonious lines. At the same time must be added that strictly suits only Appius as censor in the two consulships which he held after his censorship and in his other later activity we encounter nothing more of that vehemently revolutionary spirit. must probably be assumed that he himself in his later years abandoned the career on which he had entered at first, and became reconciled in some measure to the existing conservative government-if not, we do not see how he could have ended otherwise than like the Gracchi or like Caesar. But though this be granted,
clear that Appius Caecus was not, any more than the decemvir Appius, an appropriate representative of the strict aristocratic party; and Livy,
when he treats Caecus in this light, has certainly assigned to him part most incongruous to his character. Itis necessary, not in ordu
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APPENDIX 50;
to complete our view of Caecus, but in order to perceive the character of Livy and of that mode of writing history which he represents, that we should dwell for a moment on the false colours with which this Claudius like all the rest has been overlaid. I do not include in this category the statement that the builder of the temple of Bellona placed in it the escutcheons of his ancestors with a list of the curule otiices filled by each (Plin. H. 1V. xxxv. 3, I2, where this is erroneously referred to the consul of 259); aristocratic pride is very compatible with the character of a Pericles, and Caesar with all his demagogism boasted of his descent from Venus. But the view given of the censor ship of Appius, as we read it in Livy (ix. 29, 3o, 33, 34), is very strange, not so much on account of the occasional attacks on the "inborn arrogance” of the Claudii, “that family destined by fate to quarrel with the plebs” (ix. 29, 33), as because all his palpably demagogic measures are passed over in silence-a silence which is the more evidently intentional, seeing that the most important of these, the
enrolment of persons who had no landed property in the tribes, is afterwards mentioned incidentally under the censorship of Fabius (x. 7). It is no less remarkable that Livy (x. 15) represents Appius Caecus as again heading the opposition to the Ogulnian law of 454, which abolished the last substantial privilege of the patricians as respected the great priestly colleges; and here, at the close of the whole strife between the orders, once more contrasts him as the incarnation of patricianism with the figure of the pure plebeian hero Decius Mus. Nor is this even enough. At the consular elections for 485 the same Appius is said to have attempted unconstitutionally to bring in a second patrician, Q. Fabius Rullianus, as consul along with himself, and the project is said to have been thwarted solely by the loyal magnanimity of the said Fabius (x. 15). A different, but analogous story in given by Cicero (Brut. I4, 55) ; according to which Caecus in the capacity of interrex presiding at the elections (he filled this otlice according to Livy, x. 11, in 45 5—on which occasion, how
ever, as the first interrex he could not have conducted the election and according to his elagium on two other occasions unknown to us) is said to have rejected the votes given for a plebeian consular candidate, and thus to have led the tribune of the people, M’. Curius, to propose a further restriction of patrician privileges. That these evidently kindred stories are highly incredible, is plain to every one conversant with the matter; how is it possible that, at a time when the patricians had been divested almost without resistance of the last privileges of
their order, and when the plebeians had had their title to share in the consulship not only constitutionally secured ever since men could remember, but also long confirmed by usage, the idea of such a restoration should have entered the mind of a mature statesman? And these accounts, in themselves more than suspicious, are coupled with the names of men than whom none could have been selected more unsuitable. The crazy patrician, who brings forward those prepos terous projects, is no other than the censorial demagogne Appius Caecus who was for good reasons at bitterest feud with the ruling con
506
APPENDIX
servative party; and the person, whom he unconstitntionally selects as his colleague for 458, is no other than Fabius Rullianus,. who had checked the unbounded demagogism of Appius on succeeding him in the censorship. We might be disposed to recognize in this one of those singular political conversions which have occurred at various epochs in the history of the world. But, as abrupt transition from one party extreme to another and renegade arrogance have at no time been regarded as specially honourable, and as so much is said about Caecus more especially in the way of censure, such a change of sides, which must have produced the greatest sensation, would certainly have been prominently noticed in the accounts. But we nowhere meet with any hint of the sort : on the contrary, we have seen even the censorship of Appius, clearly as it bears on the face of it the stamp of demagogism, divested as far as possible of any such character in the narrative of Livy. To this falls to be added the spirit of perversion and invention hostile to the Claudii, noticed at the outset as pervading the older annals generally. The delineation of the character of Caecus- towards whom the ninth and tenth books of Livy exhibit various traces of an altogether peculiar hatred-cannot be separated from the history of the trial and suicide of Appius Claudius, consul in 283, as told by Dionysius and Livy, which has been demonstrated to be a pure lie foreign to the earlier annals by the mention of the same man in the Capitoline Fasti twenty years later; from those constantly recurring consular and senatorial speeches of Claudii hostile to the people ; from that irrational misrepresentation of the decemvir; or, generally, from
the whole class of anti-Claudian stories. Nothing remains accordingly but the hypothesis that the anti-popular anecdotes attached to the demagogue Caecus—turning, it may be remarked, throughout on easily invented trifles and nowhere ati'ecting his leading and well-known actions-have been designedly perverted or invented.
It thus appears that at a pretty early period a pencil not merely hostile generally to the Claudii, but specially assailing them as the hereditary foes of progress and of democracy, has been at work in the Roman annals, and has caricatured" its portraits with more good-will than judgment. Who it was that wielded can only be guessed inferentially. That the earliest_annalists, and Fabius in particular, knew nothing of these lies, clear from what w. have said above. Ofij the other hand they cannot‘well'have originated with Livy; this far from honourable species of libel concealing itself under the falsifying
documents by no means consistent with the morally pure character is’ work, and besides there was-‘no ostensible ground for in his
For, when Livy wrote theitirst ‘decad', there remained no man bf‘hote belonging to the main 'stock of the patrician Claudii, and pi'obably none of them remained at all except the son of P. Clodius,
was utterly insignificant and was ruining himself by reckless debauchery; the collateral branch of the Nerones was then obscure, Tiberius the future emperor was still boy. Further, far from credible that Dionysius, whose books are evidently pervaded
same tendency, and who professes to give us antidemocratic
use:
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APPENDIX sq
of the Claudii even in numerous cases when Livy is silent, should have in this matter rested solely on Livy and invented in a similar spirit what he did not find there. Besides, if the notice in Cicero’s Brutus has been correctly estimated above, this series“of falsifications must have already existed in Cicero's time; but the Claudian arrogance" was certainly not yet at that time generally recognized and familiar, otherwise assuredly Cicero would not have allowed so suitable a handle for invective against his mortal enemy Clodius wholly to escape him. I,astly, these falsifications bear on the face of them the stamp of a democratic origin. Putting together all these indications, we may at all events suggest a name to which the suspicion of having set afloat these plebeian libels on the Claudian house may not without warrant be attached. It is that of Licinius Macer. Macer was, as is well known, a contemporary of Cicero, senior to him by a few years (tribune of the people in 68! , he died, after having served the praetorship, in 688), a notorious democrat and the author of ill written and not much read annals, which however, it can be shown, formed a main authority both with Livy and with Dionysius. I have shown in
my Clrronalagie that this man, who had been legally condemned for extortion and probably on that account committed suicide, was not only a thief, but at the same time a thoroughly shameless falsifier. It is true that nothing is known of any special quarrel between him and the patrician Claudii; but all the latter were, in the period of Sulla
and the subsequent times, in the oligarchic camp and most decidedly
opposed to Macer and his party, and we may perhaps even point out . the individual who specially attracted the hatred of the democrats.
Few of the acts of Gains Claudius consul in 662 are recorded ; but his extraordinary influence in the state is more than once (Cic. pro Plane. 2! , 5t, Brut. 45, I66) prominently referred to in so striking a manner, that we may certainly recognize him as one of the leaders of the senate at this time, and one who may be presumed accordingly to have been specially obnoxious to the party of progress.
Until further investigation shall confirm or remove this suspicion resting on the credibility of Macer and the annalists who derived their accounts from him, we may be allowed to regard it as a reason for cautiously receiving whatever is connected with his authority, especially seeing that it affects a man whose reputation is not thereby rendered worse than it is already.
It remains that we cast a glance at the Claudii of the later purely historical times, and their political position. This, however, need not detain us long. For that there was no clan-policy at all in the sense which not a few modern historians associate with the term, the inquiry which we have just concluded shows by an instructive example; the far-famed Claudian policy would seem, from that review, to have been nothing else than a caricature invented by a partisan falsifier of history.
In the sixth and seventh centuries the Claudii had no remarkable
the good and bad qualities which pretty uniformly marked the Roman oligarchy characterized them also, and there are few of the numerous men of this family known to us in the later times
prominence;
508
APPENDIX
of the republic, as to whom we can tell more than their names and titles.
Of course the Clauclii of this period were, like the rest of the clans of the high nobility, generally found in the conservative camp; yet no notable champion of the oligarchy appeared among them, while there were various men who professed oppositional sentiments or milder
_views leaning to the popular side. This is especially the ease with all those, of whose characters any sketches or even any isolated vivid traits have been preserved. The well-known stories regarding P. Pulcher consul in the first Punic war, who audaciously killed the sacred fowls at Drepana and, in defiance of the senate, nominated Glicia his former clerk as dictator, indicate great insolence doubtless, but not aristocratic arrogance; they rather betoken that pride which disregards traditional views and class-prejudices and is in fact truly democratic. In the nomination of Glicia, which excited the utmost horror in all genuine patricians for centuries, he was, beyond doubt, influenced by the recollection that his ancestor Caecus had introduced his clerk Flavius into the senate. C. Pulcher, when censor in 585, prevented his colleague Ti. Gracchus from depriving the freedmen by censorial authority of their right of suffrage, because, as he afl-irmed, none could be deprived of that right without a decree of the people (Liv. xlv. ! 5)—-a course which was very proper and highly com mendable, but not specially oligarchic. Appius Claudius, consul in 61! , is known as one of the most conspicuous promoters of the agitation of the Gracchi ; he himself along with the two Gracchi, the elder of whom was his son-in-law, presided over the execution of the scheme of reform as a commissioner for the distribution of lands. As to the tribune of the people P. Clodius, the adopted son of the plebeian Fonteius, it is hardly necessary to prove that he at least was no pearl of conservatism. If, therefore, the very moderate measure of historical truth and importance, which lies at the root of the hypothesis of a hereditary family policy, is to be in future brought to bear on the case of the Claudii, it will be well at least utterly to abandon the current tradition, and to regard this patrician house not as the defenders of an obdurate aristocracy, but as the predecessors of the Gracchi and of Caesar. In this respect the Claudii were justly called to ascend, in combination with the Julian house, the imperial throne, and even on that throne they did not wholly forget the traditional policy of their clan; for it is only in the light of that traditional policy that we can rightly understand why Tiberius and Claudius declined the title of
lnpcrator, and various similar traits.
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