All the old enemies of Rome attacked her again when she was weak and rising
out of her ruins, but Camillus had wisely persuaded the Romans to add the people
of Veii, Capena, and Falerii to the number of their citizens, making four more
tribes; and this addition to their numbers helped them beat off their foes.
But this enlarged the number of the plebeians, and enabled them to make their
claims more heard. Moreover, the old quarrel between poor and rich, debtor and
creditor, broke out again. Those who had saved their treasure in the time of the
sack had made loans to those who had lost to enable them to build their houses
and stock their farms again, and after a time they called loudly for payment,
and when it was not forthcoming had the debtors seized to be sold as slaves.
Camillus himself was one of the hardest creditors of all, and the barracks where
slaves were placed to be sold were full of citizens.
COSTUMES.
Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was full of pity, and raised money to redeem four
hundred of them, trying with all his might to get the law changed and to save
the rest; but the rich men and the patricians thought he acted only out of
jealousy of Camillus, and to get up a party for himself. They said he was
raising a sedition, and Publius Cornelius Cossus was named Dictator to put it
down. Manlius was seized and put into chains, but released again. At last the
rich men bought over two of the tribunes to accuse him of wanting to make
himself a king, and this hated title turned all the people against their friend,
so that the general cry sentenced him to be cast down from the top of the
Tarpeian rock; his house on the Capitol was overthrown, and his family declared
that no son of their house should ever again bear the name of Manlius.
COSTUME.
Yet the plebeians were making their way, and at last succeeded in gaining the
plebeian magistracies and equal honors with the patricians. A curious story is
told of the cause of the last effort which gained the day. A patrician named
Fabius Ambustus had two daughters, one of whom he gave in marriage to Servius
Sulpicius, a patrician and military tribune, the other to Licinius Stolo. One
day, when Stolo's wife was visiting her sister, there was a great noise and
thundering at the gates which frightened her, until the other Fabii said it was
only her husband coming home from the Forum attended by his lictors and clients,
laughing at her ignorance and alarm, until a whole troop of the clients came in
to pay their court to the tribune's wife.
Stolo's wife went home angry and vexed, and reproached her husband and her
father for not having made her equal with her sister, and so wrought on them
that they put themselves at the head of the movement in favor of the plebeians;
and Licinius and another young plebeian named Lucius Sextius, being elected year
after year tribunes of the people, went on every time saying Veto to
whatever was proposed by anybody, and giving out that they should go on doing so
till three measures were carried—viz., that interest on debt should not be
demanded; that no citizen should possess more than three hundred and twenty
acres of the public land, or feed more than a certain quantity of cattle on the
public pastures; and, lastly, that one of the two consuls should always be a
plebeian.
They went on for eight years, always elected by the people and always
stopping everything. At last there was another inroad of the Gauls expected, and
Camillus, though eighty years old, was for the fifth time chosen Dictator, and
gained a great victory upon the banks of the Anio. The Senate begged him to
continue Dictator till he could set their affairs to rights, and he vowed to
build a temple to Concord if he could succeed. He saw indeed that it was time to
yield, and persuaded the Senate to think so; so that at last, in the year 367,
Sextius was elected consul, together with a patrician, Æmilius. Even then the
Senate would not receive Sextius till he was introduced by Camillus. From this
time the patricians and plebeians were on an equal footing as far as regarded
the magistracies, but the priesthood could belong only to the patricians.
Camillus lived to a great age, and was honored as having three times saved his
country. He died at last of a terrible pestilence which raged in Rome in the
year 365.
The priests recommended that they should invite the players from Etruria to
perform a drama in honor of the feats of the gods, and this was the beginning of
play-acting in Rome.
Not long after there yawned a terrible chasm in the Forum, most likely from
an earthquake, but nothing seemed to fill it up, and the priests and augurs
consulted their oracles about it. These made answer that it would only close on
receiving of what was most precious. Gold and jewels were thrown in, but it
still seemed bottomless, and at last the augurs declared that it was courage
that was the most precious thing in Rome. Thereupon a patrician youth named
Marcus Curtius decked himself in his choicest robes, put on his armor, took his
shield, sword, and spear, mounted his horse, and leapt headlong into the gulf,
thus giving it the most precious of all things, courage and self-devotion. After
this one story says it closed of itself, another that it became easy to fill it
up with earth.
The Romans thought that such a sacrifice must please the gods and bring them
success in their battles; but in the war with the Hernici that was now being
waged the plebeian consul was killed, and no doubt there was much difficulty in
getting the patricians to obey a plebeian properly, for in the course of the
next twenty years it was necessary fourteen times to appoint a Dictator for the
defence of the state, so that it is plain there must have been many alarms and
much difficulty in enforcing discipline; but, on the whole, success was with
Rome, and the neighboring tribes grew weaker.
CURTIUS LEAPING INTO THE GULF. (From a Bas-Relief.)
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