der observed by the interrex, Niebuhr had no ground for quoting it as something unaccountable except by his theory.

(7.) Zonaras VII. 17. Χρόνῳ δέ ποτε ὑποτοπήσαντές τινες τὸ πραττόμενον, οὐκ εἴων καὶ ἄμφω τοὺς ὑπατοὺς ἢ στρατηγοὺς ὑπὸ τῶν δυνατῶν ἀποδείκνυσθαι, ἀλλ ̓ ἤθελον καὶ αὐτοὶ τὸν ἕτερον ἐκ τῶν εὐ πατριδῶν αἱρεῖσθαι. ὡς δὲ τοῦτο κατεργάσαντο, προείλοντο Σπούριον Poúptov. Niebuhr thus comments: "Dion Cassius conceived that the whole body of the patricians, not the senate alone, 13 were in the exclusive possession [How so?] of the elections prior to 273..... The passage (of Dion) has been preserved, word for word, rather through the clumsiness than the faithfulness of the writer who abridged his work. But he omitted the context:" [How does that appear?] "hence it is not Dion's fault, if his words should lead us to suppose that the elections had been in the hands of the patricians much longer, perhaps ever since the death of Brutus." This is extraordinary mystification. Niebuhr, with a most condescending patronage, by anticipation shelters Dion from so grievous an imputation as that of opposing one of Niebuhr's theories; and attributes Xpóvo TOTE to the foolish Zonaras himself. Yet what are the facts? Zonaras tells us that hitherto the patricians had carried the elections as they pleased; but the commonalty now determined on struggling to elect at least one consul in their own interest. (He adds ex Tv Taтρixíшv, lest the reader should anticipate the Licinian law, and imagine that they were striving for a plebeian consul.) What is plainer than this? What ground does it afford for imputing "clumsiness" to Zonaras? And what for imagining organic change in the mode of election? Niebuhr adds: "He says πроsíλоνтo on account of the reprehensio comitiorum; the Curies appointed absolutely, anedeízvucav." But this also is unfounded. Απεδείκνυσαν was already quoted from Dionys. IX. 1; but there the word certainly refers to the Centuries, and to the popular party, and not to the Curies. Dionysius surely understood Greek. Пposiλovto ("they preferred," 'they fixed upon"), does not seem to be a technical term at all; although Niebuhr in Dionys. VIII. 87, renders it "pre-elected." But as the senate never had a right of pre-electing consuls, no constitutional term can have formed itself in Latin, of which πрOEovTo might be the translation. Nor does Niebuhr pretend to είλοντο render it by a Latin equivalent.

13 Who ever imagined such a thing of the senate?

(8.) Dion. VIII. 83, states that K. Fabius and L. Æmilius entered on their consulate "in the year of the city 270." Niebuhr regards this as proving that this was the year when "the great innovation in the constitution" was made, of electing the consuls by the Curiate assembly only. But until he has proved the fact that such innovation ever took place at all, this passage of course is useless. Apparently Dionysius here specified the date so precisely, because he regarded it as a most unfortunate consulate, from the events of the Volscian war: in consequence of which (ch. 87), L. Æmilius "was ashamed to come home to hold the comitia, having lost the strongest part of his army."

(9.) Dionysius IX. 1.—συνέπεισαν ἀλλήλους ἀφ' ἑκάστης μερίδος ὕπατον αἱρεθῆναι. They came to a compromise to choose a consul from each party :" just as election-committees do in England. Niebuhr quotes this as authorizing his statement, that they chose one consul by the Curies and one by the Centuries! But he also adduces the following:-

(10.) Liv. II. 43.—(Obtinuere) Patres (ut in Fabia gente consulatus maneret.) M. Fabium consulem creant: Fabio collega Cn. Manlius datur.-Niebuhr omits the words which I have enclosed in parentheses, and hereby obscures Livy's reason for giving prominence to Fabius. If there were no such reason visible in the history, and if this formula were constantly repeated henceforth down to the decemvirate, it might be inferred -not that one consul was elected by the Curies, but-that to be consul major conferred at this time a greater superiority of honour than afterwards. But we find the formula too seldom for this. It recurs eight years later, Liv. II. 56: "Patres (ad ultimum dimicationis rati rem venturam) Ap. Claudium (Appii filium, jam inde a paternis certaminibus invisum plebi) consulem faciunt. Collega ei T. Quinctius datur." Here again Niebuhr omits the words in parentheses, which would have guided his reader to the true solution, and shown the emptiness of his argument.-In Iv. 13, also, we read: "Consul sextum creatus T. Quinctius Capitolinus, minime opportunus vir novanti res: collega additur ei Agrippa Menenius." A third time does Niebuhr omit the critical words which refute him; and remarks on the passage, (vol. II. p. 417): Nothing but the unlimited influence of the patricians in the Centuries, or a new usurpation by the Curies, could place him

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[T. Quinctius] in that station [the consulship]. The latter is plainly stated (!) with regard to the year 316, unless it is by mere chance that Livy makes use of terms which elsewhere convey a definite sense." But there is a tertium quid: it neither means a usurpation by the Curies, nor is a phrase used by chance; its meaning is plain when the unmutilated passage is read.

The same formula in fact is found, (and it is hard to think that this escaped Niebuhr's searching eye,) in VII. 1, and VII. 21; and the reason, as before, is each time evident. "Plebes consulatum L. Sextio, cujus lege partus erat, dedit: Patres præturam Sp. Furio, M. filio, Camillo. . . . L. Sextio collega ex Patribus datus L. Æmilius Mamercinus.' Here if we were to quote and reason as Niebuhr, we might drop the words, cujus lege partus erat, and proceed: "Thus the plebeians perpetrated the usurpation of electing L. Sextius consul, in the assembly of the tribes; and the patricians in their Curies effected a like usurpation in regard to the prætorship."-Again, ch. 21, “P. Valerio Publicolæ datus e plebe collega C. Marcius Rutilus."

(11.) Vol. II. p. 189.-" The annalist who supplied Livy with materials for making the tribune Lætorius say, 11. 56,—A patribus non consulem sed carnificem ad vexandam et lacerandam plebem creatum esse,-certainly did not regard his election as the act of the people. At this time the nominee of the Curies," &c. This has been already answered in the similar comment just suggested on Liv. VII. 1.

(12.) Another argument Niebuhr draws from the appointment of Cincinnatus (Liv. III. 19,) in place of the slain P. Valerius. The surviving consul, (says he, vol. II. p. 297,) “instead of convoking the Centuries,-which alone had a right to fill up the vacant consulship, even supposing they had given up the other for ever,-got the Curies to confirm L. Cincinnatus, who was appointed consul by an ordinance of the Senate." In proof of what is here narrated in so historical a tone, note 676 refers us to note 425, note 425 sends us back to 676, and refers also to note 389; and 389 only says that there must have been usurpation, because "the appointment of Cincinnatus by the plebs would be unaccountable." A reader who has no time to turn backwards and forwards, naturally imagines that in one or other of the three notes there is some good proof; but there is

nothing more than this one argument!-Need it be said, how often an English election is unaccountable to those who do not know the secret influences at work? No one here can tell, whether Cincinnatus's celebrity as a general may not have turned the scale in his favour, when a consul had just fallen in battle. Whether Dionysius (x. 17,) has explained this election rightly or not, is another question; but it is not Niebuhr who has any right to complain that he "has utterly misrepresented it." Dionysius says that the Senate fixed on Cincinnatus in a secret conclave, (which explains what he meant before by Bou πрosíλeto, &c. . . . in other cases,) and by their intrigues the first class voted for him with such unanimity, as to have a majority at once in the Comitia. That may be false, but it is not at all incredible.

(13.) From the bare fact of the Fabii holding one of the consulships for seven successive years, Niebuhr reasons as follows, p. 175: "That this cannot have been matter of chance is the more certain, inasmuch as the effect, so long as the lesser houses formed a separate body, must have been that either they or the greater houses, as an estate, were excluded. One cannot but see that this must have been connected with some revolution, &c. ..." which revolution, it seems, must have been the usurpation by the Curies!-Never was a plain case more needlessly embroiled. No one has ever yet supposed that the seven consulships were matter of chance. They are ascribed to the power of the Fabia gens at that crisis; a power which is essential equally under Niebuhr's hypothesis, and sufficient to account for the facts in the common story. At least, if it is not sufficient, then neither will a usurpation by the Curies aid in the solution. For if there was no such real greatness in the Fabii, why would the other patricians give way to them in the Curies? The Senate, it may be said, had its own purposes to serve by the Fabii. Well: if so, that would be equally true, in whichever assembly the voting went on.-But when Niebuhr introduces the "greater and lesser houses," he does but build new results on unsubstantiated hypothesis.

At the risk of tedium, I have thus endeavoured to scrape together all that Niebuhr advances with any attempt at argument on this subject, and I have tried to omit nothing. Numerous scattered assertions probably remain; as vol. II. p. 119, "It is

related that the first elective warden was appointed by the Senate; which is tantamount to a declaration that he was appointed by the Curies:" but where we have no evidence beyond Niebuhr's word offered, there is of course nothing to refute. On the whole, nothing that he has adduced appears to add even the faintest plausibility to his gratuitous attempts thus to rewrite the old annalists of this period, and to ascribe to the Curies a prominence which must infallibly (as was said above) have made their name a party watchword. Not a trace is left of its ever having been controverted in Rome, which assembly should elect the consuls. If the Curies and Centuries had been (as Niebuhr says) on an equipoise; had the patricians been supreme in one and the plebeians in the other, (as he teaches); then the State would have been rent asunder in the very way, which (he remarks in the same passage, vol. I. p. 433,) would have happened from making the Tribes and Curies co-ordinate bodies. The Centuries could have stopped the machine of State, unless the patricians gave way to their demands; nor would any tribune's veto have been needed. Yet it is gratuitous in Niebuhr to ascribe to the plebeians this supreme power over the Centuriate election. Parties, it is manifest, were very much balanced in that assembly; and from year to year the scale swayed various ways.

F. W. NEWMAN.

X.

COMMENTARIES ON, AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF, THE ENEIS OF VIRGIL.-(Continued from last Part.)

BY JAMES HENRY, M.D.,

Fellow of the College of Physicians, Dublin.

PART II.-COMPREHENDING FROM V. 364 to 754.

V. 364. Pygmalionis opes.-These words have been hitherto understood to mean the treasures, of which Pygmalion hoped to obtain possession by the murder of Sichæus, "quas ille