th rejoicing in holiday array,
while he proceeded to the Capitol to sacrifice an ox to Jupiter there.
His chief prisoners walked behind his car in chains, and at the moment
of his sacrifice they were taken to a cell below the Capitol and there
put to death, for the Roman was cruel in his joy. Nothing was more
desired than such a triumph; but such was often the hatred between the
plebeians and the patricians, that sometimes the plebeian army would
stop short in the middle of a victorious campaign to hinder their consul
from having a triumph. Even Sicinius is said once to have acted thus,
and it began to be plain that Rome must fall if it continued to be thus
divided against itself.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X.

THE DECEMVIRS.

B.C. 450.

The Romans began to see what mischiefs their quarrels did, and they
agreed to send three of their best and wisest men to Greece to study the
laws of Solon at Athens, and report whether any of them could be put in
force at Rome.

To get the new code of laws which they brought home put into working
order, it was agreed for the time to have no consuls, praetors, nor
tribunes, but ten governors, perhaps in imitation of the nine Athenian
archons. They were called Decemvirs (_decem_, ten; _vir_, a man),
and at their head was Lucius Appius Claudius, the grandson of him who had
killed himself to avoid being condemned for his harshness. At first they
governed well, and a very good set of laws was drawn up, which the
Romans called the Laws of the Ten Tables; but Appius soon began to give
way to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a war
with the AEqui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatus
said it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundred
and twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudius
sent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army that
he might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when he
advised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and
sent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretches
instructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass
they set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock and
fought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come near
him, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down on
his head. Then they went back with a story that th