But does not "commoda" weaken the effect? 2. Sic, modo quam sumsit, repetitam rursus acerbe Nocte brevem vitæ lampada reddit homo. But is it allowable to call the light a torch here, when night is the time of payment? 3. Sic sibi mane datam, repetitam vespere lucem, Quum noctis subeunt tempora, solvit homo. But "mane" and "vespere" are not in the original. 4. Sic quam crediderant lucem, mox fata reposcunt, Nec mora, quin ipsa nocte resignet homo. Fata is not in the original, but might, we think, be introduced without much impropriety. Horace's "resigno quæ dedit" and "cuncta resigno," are ample authority for this verb, which is indeed equivalent to rescribo, I repay. 5. Sic capit usuram lucis, propereque redactam, Quum jam noctis eunt tempora, solvit homo. But we think redactam an unfit word, because it expresses, not merely the demand, but the actual recovery of a debt. Omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam : 6. Sic capit usuram lucis, retroque petitam Haud mora quin prima nocte resignet homo.—Or (ipsa nocte.) Our own inclination favours this last version, in default, for the present, of something better. These are mere Nugæ Metricæ, but may, perhaps, be useful to some of our younger readers, for whose amusement we subjoin one or two more trifles, extracted from our Scrap-book: Inscriptum in Albo Walhalla, ædis splendidissimæ, a Ludovico rege Bavarorum conditæ. In honorem Ludovici Bavaria regis, inscriptum in Albo Gazophylacii Finge hederas auro, lauros imitare smaragdis, 4. Πλέον ἥμισυ παντός. Uno oculo mancum, crure uno, unoque lacerto, 6 Regensburg, or Ratisbon. 7 Donaustauf. Te petit Antinous: quid Hyle sperare licebit, These last lines are psychologically curious. They were conceived, and mainly composed, during sleep. The author had been reading, the day before, that passage of Hesiod in which the thesis occurs; but without any thought of writing an epigram.8 That the subject, and the idea of its treatment, presented themselves to his mind in a sleep of the night, and that the verses were chiefly composed in that state, the author has no doubt whatsoever. He remembers, indeed, a short waking, or halfwaking interval, in which he reviewed, and, it may be, retouched and completed the epigram: and to this circumstance it is probably owing that, when he awoke the next morning, the lines remained engraven on his mind, as they.here stand. It had happened to him at various times during his life to compose verses in sleep: but, on waking in the morning, “ibi omnis effusus labor," there remained only the consciousness of having been so employed: sometimes, indeed, he has remembered the subject; but the poetry itself was gone; "ceu fumus in auras commixtus tenues, fugit diversa." Y. III. DR. WILHELM IHNE ON THE EARLY ROMAN CONSTITUTION. FORSCHUNGEN AUF DEM GEBIETE DER RÖMISCHEN VERFASSUNGSGESCHICHTE, VON DR. WILHELM IHNE. Frankfurt am Main, 1847. IN the present article, it is proposed to introduce to the reader some very original views brought forward in opposition 8 By an odd coincidence, the very thesis (πλέον ἥμισυ παντός) was given at Cambridge a few months afterwards, as one of the subjects for the prize epigrams. 9 Our readers will probably remember Coleridge's account of a like incident in his life, and the rich fragment which that great genius saved from the wreck of his poetic dream. to Niebuhr by the able author of these inquiries. It is impossible to give all of Dr. Ihne's arguments, or all the details of his opinions; but the responsibility will be here assumed of selecting those opinions which are most important, and those arguments which have most weight. Niebuhr has endeavoured to establish, that in the earliest times of Rome the clients and the plebeians were distinct bodies. He holds that the Clients were generally townsfolk,-artisans or traders, attached as dependents to particular patrician houses, whom they were bound to serve with purse and sword; though there were some clients who lived in the country, as farm tenants to the patricians, and could be ejected at will; but that the Plebeians were country-people, living by agriculture, having received from the state, in freehold, seven jugera of land each, and standing in no social relations towards the great patricians. He likewise supposes the patricians to have no right of freehold, except to the extent of two jugera; but that this disadvantage was compensated by their exclusive right of occupying the public land, for which they paid to the state a trifling rent, that freed them from other taxes upon it. Moreover, he believes that before Ancus, there was no plebeian body; the nucleus of which consisted of the Latins whom that king conquered. Nearly all of these points are impugned by Ihne. First, the evidence on which Niebuhr rests for his cardinal distinction between the plebeians and clients is to be considered. Against him stands the direct testimony of ancient writers; who believed that the population of earliest Rome consisted of two classes only-patricians and plebeians; that all clients were plebeians, and that originally all plebeians were clients. This is most pointedly stated by Dionysius, II. 9 and 10; by Cicero, De Rep. II. 9; by Livy, vi. 18; by Festus, p. 233, Müller; and Niebuhr is fully aware of the entire novelty of his own. view. He rests it, however, on certain passages of Dionysius and Livy, who, in narrating the contests of the two orders, represent the patricians as defending themselves by aid of their clients. Niebuhr regards this as the truth slipping out, and treats the other more formal statement as an eroneous theory, to which no attention is due. But Ihne precisely reverses the argument. Dionysius, especially, is a garrulous writer, who tries to fill up the meagre annals of early times by details drawn from later events and circumstances; a fact which no one knew better than Niebuhr. Now in later days, it is certainly true that the nobles armed their clients against the commons: this is the representation which Dionysius would be likely to transfer by anticipation to the primitive times. But it was not afterwards true that clients and commons were identical bodies; consequently, a careless historian was less likely to slip by error into a confusion of early clients and plebeians. The statement therefore of Dionysius, which Niebuhr rejects as a mere theory, ought to be received as a matter of testimony; and that which he adopts as a truth, ought to be exploded as one of the many errors arising from the vain attempts at a "pragmatical history," where no documents existed. It is true that Livy also, in various passages, (II. 35, 56; III. 14, 16,) distinguishes the clients from the plebs in narrating the tumults: but at most, this would only prove that he held the plebeians not to be all clients. No modern interpreter before Niebuhr ever saw a difficulty in reconciling Livy with himself. This historian undoubtedly regarded the clients and lictors as plebeians, and took exactly the same view of their position before the Decemviral laws, as Niebuhr takes of them after those laws. It is a fiction, necessary for Niebuhr's theory, but uncountenanced by authorities, that the Decemvirs introduced clients into the body of the plebs; but as Livy knew nothing of this, and makes no change in his phraseology after their laws, his evidence is not to the purpose. Niebuhr (p. 411, vol. I., 4th edition,) argues that the plebeians were conquered Latins, as follows:-1. Ancus Martius is said to have planted the conquered Latins on the Aventine; 2. The Aventine was made, by the Icilian Law, the chief seat of the plebeians; therefore, before the Latins were conquered, there were no plebeians. But, strange to say, Niebuhr himself does not believe in the transplantation on which his argument rests. He holds the plebeians to have been country-people; and he argues, if they had been brought to Rome, they could not have tilled the lands. Ihne acknowledges that there are many instances in history of such transferences of population, but he is persuaded that here some Greek historian, who knew of similar measures in VI. B |