here was no occasion for raising a mob; that he was proceeding by law,
not by force." He cites the girl into court. Those who stood by her
advising her to follow him, they now reached the tribunal of Appius. The
claimant rehearses the farce well known to the judge, as being the
author of the plot, "that a girl born in his house, and clandestinely
transferred from thence to the house of Virginius, had been fathered on
the latter." That he stated a thing ascertained by certain evidence, and
would prove it to the satisfaction even of Virginius himself, whom the
principal portion of that loss would concern. That it was but just that
in the interim the girl should accompany her master. The advocates for
Virginia, after they had urged that Virginius was absent on business of
the state, that he would be here in two days if word were sent to him,
that it was unfair that in his absence he should run any risk regarding
his children, demand that he adjourn the whole matter till the arrival
of the father; that he should allow the claim for her interim liberty
according to the law passed by himself, and not allow a maiden of ripe
age to encounter the risk of her reputation before that of her liberty.

45. Appius prefaced his decree by observing that the very law, which
Virginius's friends were putting forward as the ground of their demand,
clearly showed how much he favoured liberty. But that liberty would find
secure protection in it on this condition, that it varied[146] neither
with respect to cases or persons.[147] For with respect to those
individuals who were claimed as free, that point of law was good,
because[148] any person may proceed by law (and act for them); with
respect to her who is in the hands of her father, that there was no
other person (than her father) to whom her master need relinquish his
right of possession. That it was his determination, therefore, that her
father should be sent for: in the mean time, that the claimant should
suffer no loss of his right, but that he should carry off the girl with
him, and promise that she should be produced on the arrival of him who
was called her father. When many rather murmured against the injustice
of this decision than any one individual ventured to protest against it,
the girl's uncle, Publius Numitorius, and her betrothed spouse, Icilius,
just come in; and way being made through the crowd, the multitude
thinking that Appius might be most effectually resisted by the
int