duos into the curiate assembly. There is no ground adduced, for being incredulous, that the consul was used to address the common people in that place: yet if Dionysius is wrong, his error is not a divine oracle, that can dictate truth to Niebuhr. The history, as here rewritten by the latter, is one possibility out of a thousand; a guess, and not evidence.-It may however deserve remark, that the people are not said to have voted on the senatusconsultum: it may be that there was a scruple as to the auspices being good, unless they went to the field of Mars; and this would remove all remaining difficulty imaginable in the narrative. In any case it is unendurable criticism to quote single words as proof of the very opposite of what the entire sentence is relating, and that, when the author is not talking incoherently.

In regard to the appointment of the early tribunes of the plebs, analogy may perhaps induce us to believe that they, as the consuls, were elected by the Centuries, and confirmed by the Curies; though it is a doubtful kind of reasoning to quote Livy for the first part, and Cicero for the second, when Cicero says that the Curies created them. But I cannot help protesting against Niebuhr's fiction, that the Curies ceased to confirm before Volero was a candidate. In p. 190, he argues that Volero certainly would never have been elected tribune, much less re-elected, if the Curies had had a power of confirming; therefore, they had lost the power. And this is the sort of logic which is to establish historical certainties! As if it were so certain that Volero ever personally gave violent offence. His conduct, according to Livy, was not that of a man who had received personal injury; and it is not improbable that the scene of seizing him for a soldier has been dressed up for effect. Then, neither does his re-election seem certain to Niebuhr himself, p. 216; and undoubtedly it is Lætorius, not he, who carries the law. But again; from the very beginning the tribunes showed as undaunted a spirit as that of Volero; at least, as far as our historians tell us; so that Niebuhr ought to reject the

9 Niebuhr, vol. II. p. 211, says, concerning the law of tribunician election, "the commonalty beyond doubt (!) were exclusively entitled to decide, more especially now that the confirmation of the Curies had been done away." In ex

planation of what is here advanced, as if it were historical fact, he condescends to add a note :-"That they were no longer confirmed by the Curies, has been stated in p. 190." That, it seems, ought to satisfy us.

confirmation of the Curies in toto, and not at an uncertain time between the first tribune and Volero. Once more, he all along assumes, that this lex curiata was much more than a religious formality, and that it could be refused for some other than a religious reason. Finally, he involves himself in the absurdity of supposing that the patricians gave up, (so quietly, that no tradition of the change has at all come down,) that confirmation by their own Curies, which he says was "beyond compare more momentous," and yet, when it was proposed to take away the election from those Centuries, in which (he says) "the whole power lay with the plebs," vol. I. p. 434, the state suffered a convulsion, which has made the law of Volero 10 appear as a political revolution.-I am not concerned here to justify Niebuhr's premises more than his conclusion; and I press the last remark only as an argumentum ad hominem.

Still more elaborately wrought out is his theory concerning the usurpation of consular elections by the Curies after the murder of Sp. Cassius. "The express information," says he, vol. II. p. 181, "that the elections were transferred from the Centuries to the Curies, Dionysius himself gives us in the person of the tribune Lætorius, as it had been put into his mouth by some Roman annalist:" Dionys. IX. 46. Niebuhr, here as elsewhere, quotes just enough to make a reader who is satisfied with glancing to the bottom of the page, imagine that it is really "express information." The passage is perhaps obscure, and for its explanation needs some preface.-Dionysius, it will be remembered, supposes the Curies to be as democratic and as plebeian an assembly as the tribes; only, that the former needed a πроẞоúλεʊμa of the senate, and was subject to the auspices, (IX. 41.) When about to narrate, with his usual prolixity, how the law of Volero was carried, he probably performed his synthesis as follows:-" It could not have been by the tribes, for their ordinances were not as yet law: it could not have been by the Centuries, for they were too aristocratic," in his judg

10 Dionysius indeed, whom Niebuhr and Arnold follow, appears to have enormously exaggerated these Publilian laws. Livy is simple and credible, the more so, as he was evidently at a loss to know wherein the greatness of the change consisted. He first calls it haud parea res, and next says

that it was major victoriâ quam usu, (capp. 56, 60.) His emphatic remark, "Tum primum tributis comitiis creati tribuni sunt," proves his ignorance or disbelief of the additions made by Dionysius. But this whole question needs new discussion.

ment, "to pass it; it must therefore have been passed by the uos in the Curies." Well. To the speech by which Lætorius commends to the duos the law of Volero, (ch. 46,) and sets forth the opxot and covja, made at the secession, the historian adds:—διεξελθὼν δὲ ταῦτα, τοὺς νόμους ἀπεδείκνυτο οὓς ὁ δῆμος ἐπεκύρωσεν οὐ πρὸ πολλοῦ, τόν τε περὶ τῶν δικαστηρίων μεταγωγῆς, ὡς ἔδωκεν ἡ βουλὴ τῷ δήμῳ τὴν ἐξουσίαν κρίνειν οὓς ἂν αὐτοῖς δόξειε τῶν πατρικίων, καὶ τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς ψηφηφορίας, ὡς οὐκέτι τὴν λοχῖτιν ἐκκλησίαν ἀλλὰ τὴν κουριᾶτιν ἐποίει τῶν ψήφων κυρίαν. That is; Lætorius encouraged them by reminding them how much they had already extorted from the Senate, "both the right of calling patricians to trial, [as Coriolanus already,] and the right of voting [for laws, like that of Volero,] by Curies and not by Centuries." It is not merely congruous, but was essential, to Dionysius's entire account, to believe this: there is no mark of heterogeneous material here, to suggest that we have the fragment of some annalist, who had narrated that the Senate had by usurpation elected consuls in the Curies instead of the Centuries. Yet it is this, of which (Niebuhr says,) the passage gives "express information!" He adds; "Taking this fact by itself, Dionysius might deem, as he does, that an advantage had been gained by the democracy:"which shows that Niebuhr interpreted the passage exactly as I have done. Yet he coolly proceeds to say: "As it stood in the annals, immediately after the death of Cassius, he must have regarded it as a senseless misrepresentation," &c. Thus, in a sentence which does but tell a self-consistent romance, he not only divines an old fragment, consisting of—" votes by Curies instead of Centuries;" but fills it up thus out of his own imagination: "Immediately after the death of Cassius, the Senate by usurpation began, in the election of the consuls, to take the votes by Curies instead of Centuries." Such is the "express" evidence on which he builds.

We go back from this to the passages with which he tries to connect it; viz. those which are found in the seven consulships of the Fabii. (1.) Liv. 11. 42.—Invisum erat Fabium nomen : tenuere tamen patres, ut cum L. Æmilio Kæso Fabius consul crearetur. And soon after: Ea pars reipublicæ vicit [sc. Patres.] Nec in præsens modo, sed in venientem etiam annum M. Fabium . . . . L. Valerium consules dedit.-On these passages Niebuhr reasons to the following effect: "The Patres

brought about the election of their own candidates; but the Curies must be meant by the Patres; therefore the Curies had voted themselves, instead of letting the Centuries vote." This is as if when an English writer had left on record; "That year the Carlton Club carried the election of certain young noblemen [tenuere ut crearentur] for the West Riding and for Middlesex;" a German professor were to found on it the conclusion, that the Carlton Club had of themselves elected the candidates into their places, after illegally silencing the constitutional electors. Indeed, in Liv. II. 56, we read, Plebs Voleronem tribunum reficit; on which a new Niebuhr might comment, "Plebs must mean the assembly of the tribes; therefore the tribes usurped the right of election, before it was given them by the Publilian law." In all the other passages, Niebuhr's explanation is equally arbitrary.

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(2.) Dionys. VIII. 82.—Κελεύουσι [οἱ πατρίκιοι] μετιέναι τὴν ὑπατείαν Καίσωνα Φάβιον . . . . . καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων πατρικίων Λεύκιον Αἰμίλιον· τούτων δὲ μετιόντων τὴν ἀρχὴν, κωλύειν μὲν οὐχ οἷοί τε ἦσαν οἱ δημοτικοὶ, καταλιπόντες δὲ τὰς ἀρχαιρεσίας, ᾤχοντο ἐκ τοῦ πεδίου. As this distinctly contradicts Niebuhr's doctrine, that these consuls were not elected by the Centuries, he pronounces it a "disfigurement" of the true story. Then what infatuation to adduce the two first lines as evidence on his side! His interpretation that the лaτρíxo mean the Senate, is possible enough; but only because, as long as the Senate was secret and unanimous, no better electioneering committee was wanted. (3.) Dionys. VIII. 87. οὓς ἡ βουλὴ προείλετο καὶ οἷς παραγγέλλειν τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐκέλευσεν . . . This evidently means: "Whom the Senate selected, [not pre-elected by forms intended to be valid in law,] and urged to become candidates for the consulship."

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(4.) Dionys. IX. 1.—ἀποδείκνυται Καίσων μὲν Φάβιος ὑπὸ τῆς βουλῆς, Σπόριος δὲ Φούριος ὑπὸ τῶν δημοτικῶν. Κ. Fabius is elected by the interest of the Senate, and Sp. Furius by the popular interest;" not, Fabius by nomination of the Senate and usurpation of the Curies, which Niebuhr would have us foist in.

(5.) Dionys. IX. 42.—Οἱ δὲ πατρίκιοι-Αππιον Κλαύδιον . . προεβούλευσαν τε καὶ ἐψηφίσαντο ἄποντα ὕπατον.— The patrician party, in the absence of Ap. Claudius, nevertheless passed a senatusconsultum, affirming that it was for the good of the

state that he should become consul; and forthwith carried his election (of course in the Centuries)." Nothing is said or implied about the Curies.

(6.) Dionys. VIII. 90.—Συγκαλέσας τὴν λοχῖτιν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ τὰς ψήφους κατὰ τὰ τιμήματα ἀναδούς. Niebuhr infers from the special mention here of the Centuries and census, that it was a new thing in that year to vote. by that method; and uses the passage to prop his opinion, that for two years both consuls had been elected by the Curies alone, but that this year a compromise was made (and lasted till the decemvirate) of electing one consul by the Curies and one by the Centuries. This passage of Dionysius indeed distinctly states that both were elected by the Centuries; but Niebuhr felt himself exempted from the necessity of finishing the quotation and placing the fact before the reader's eyes, because, as we have seen, he claims a right of picking out half clauses from Dionysius, as from the "old annalist," and rejecting the main statement as Dionysius's own. Yet to a reader of Dionysius all is self-consistent. We were told that at the previous election (ch. 87,) the Senate took the strong measure of passing a vote to indicate what patricians ought to be candidates for the consulate. In consequence the men whom the people would have chosen, refused to come forward. Thus, as the people's candidates were driven off the field, the election was a virtual nullity. In consequence, the year after (ch. 90), when the patricians tried to push young Appius Claudius into the consulate, the tribunes forbade the voting, the consuls went out of office, and a dead lock ensued. An outcry was made for a dictator; but at last it was agreed to have an interrex.12 Order was restored; every thing was done in a constitutional way: the interrex summoned the Centuries: the parties made a compromise, and elected one consul devoted to the aristocracy, and one of a popular temperament.-Whether these details are to be believed, is another question: but as we here sufficiently see why Dionysius dwelt on the forms and or

11

11 Believing (if we are to conjecture), that they could not succeed against the organized efforts of the aristocracy, and that they would encounter, over and above, ill-will with the senate.

12 Niebuhr asserts, that it was an established usage for the interrex to take

no votes except for persons proposed by the senate. Reference is made to vol. 1. p. 341, in proof: but nothing there appears but quotations from Dionysius about Numa and Tullus, proving nothing, if Dionysius were ever so valid a witness.