Rome at the end of the Republic. Cicero
(_Plancius_, 7) tells how he was pushed against the arch of Fabius
while struggling through the press of the Via Sacra, and exonerates
from blame the man who was the immediate cause of his inconvenience,
holding that the one next beyond was more responsible: in which
judgment Cicero was of the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone in the
famous leading case of Scott _v_. Shepherd (1 _Smith's L.C._, 480),
where the question was who was liable for the damage eventually done
by the burning squib which was passed about the market house by
successive hands. The majority of the court held, however, against
Blackstone and Cicero, and established the doctrine of proximate
cause.]

[Footnote 105: The Roman week (_nundinum_, or more properly _inter
nundinum_) was of eight days, the last being the market day on which
the citizens rested from agricultural labour and came into town to
sell and buy and talk politics. Cf. Pliny, XVIII, 3. This custom which
Varro regrets had fallen into desuetude so far as Rome was concerned
was in his day still practised in the provinces. Thus the five tenants
on Horace's Sabine farm were wont to go every _nundinum_ to the market
town of Varia (the modern Vicovaro) to transact public business
(_Epist_. I, 14, 2).]

[Footnote 106: Varro here refers to the great economic change which was
coming over Italian husbandry in the last days of the Republic, the
disappearance of the small farms, the "septem jugera" which nurtured
the early Roman heroes like Cincinnatus and Dentatus, and even the
larger, but still comparatively small, farms which Cato describes, and
the development of the _latifundia_ given over to grazing.]

[Footnote 107: The tradition is, says Pliny, that King Augeas was the
first in Greece to use manure, and that Hercules introduced the
practice into Italy. To the wise farmer the myth of the Augean stables
is the genesis of good agriculture.]

[Footnote 108: This was the "crowded hour" in Varro's life, and, as M.
Boissier has pointed out, he loved to dwell upon its episodes. It
will be recalled that Pompey divided the Mediterranean into thirteen
districts for the war with the Pirates and put a responsible
lieutenant in command of each, thus enabling him by concurrent action
in all the districts to clear the seas in three months. Appian gives
the list of officers and the limits of their commands, saying: "The
coasts of Sicily and the Ionian sea as far