ostitution, have I brought her up. Would
you have men gratify their lust promiscuously, like cattle and wild
beasts? Whether these persons will endure such things, I know not; I
do not think that those will do so who have arms in their hands."
When the claimant of the girl was repulsed by the crowd of women and
supporters who were standing around her, silence was proclaimed by the
crier.

The decemvir, as if he had lost his reason owing to his passion,
stated that not only from Icilius's abusive harangue of the day
before, and the violence of Verginius, of which he could produce the
entire Roman people as witnesses, but from authentic information
also he had ascertained that secret meetings were held in the city
throughout the night with the object of stirring up sedition: that
he, accordingly, being aware of that danger, had come down with armed
soldiers, not to molest any peaceable person, but in order to punish,
as the majesty of the government demanded, those who disturbed the
tranquility of the state. "It will, therefore," said he, "be better to
remain quiet: go, lictor, disperse the crowd, and clear the way for
the master to lay hold of his slave." After he had thundered out these
words, full of wrath, the multitude of their own accord dispersed, and
the girl stood deserted, a sacrifice to injustice. Then Verginius,
when he saw no aid anywhere, said: "I beg you, Appius, first pardon a
father's grief, if I have attacked you too harshly: in the next place,
suffer me to ask the nurse here in presence of the maiden, what all
this means, that, if I have been falsely called her father, I may
depart hence with mind more tranquil." Permission having been granted,
he drew the girl and the nurse aside to the booths near the chapel
of Cloacina,[52] which now go by the name of the New Booths:[53] and
there, snatching a knife from a butcher, "In this, the only one way I
can, my daughter," said he, "do I secure to you your liberty." He
then plunged it into the girl's breast, and looking back toward the
tribunal, said "With this blood I devote thee,[54] Appius, and thy
head!" Appius, aroused by the cry raised at so dreadful a deed,
ordered Verginius to be seized. He, armed with the knife, cleared the
way whithersoever he went, until, protected by the crowd of persons
attending him, he reached the gate. Icilius and Numitorius took up the
lifeless body and showed it to the people; they deplored the villainy
of Appius, the fatal b