renown in peace and war, and asked him to become dictator. They found him plowing in his field. He accepted the post, by his prudence and vigor delivered the state, and on the sixteenth day laid down his office, and went back to his farm. The time required by the hero for his task was doubtless much longer than the legend allows. There is an authentic tradition of a war with the _Etruscans_, who had retained certain towns on the Roman side of the Tiber. The Romans established a fort on the _Cremera_, not far from _Veii_, which was one of them. In the course of this struggle, it is said that all the _Fabii_,--a distinguished Roman family,--except one boy, were perfidiously slain. This is an exaggerated tale. A truce was concluded with _Veii_-in 474 B.C. for forty years, which left Rome free to fight her enemies on the east and south. THE DECEMVIRS.--The internal conflict of the patricians against the commons in Rome went on. In 471 B.C. the _Publilian Law_ was passed to establish fully the right of the plebeians alone to elect their tribunes, or to exclude the upper class from their comitia. The claims of the plebeians, who formed the greater part of the fighting men, rose. They demanded first, however, that they should have the same _private_ rights as the patricians, and that the laws should be made more efficient for their protection by being reduced to a code. This was the object of the _Terentilian Law_, proposed in 462. The result was a great dispute. Some concessions failed to satisfy the plebeians. Finally it was agreed that ten men, _Decemvirs_, should be chosen indiscriminately from both classes to frame a code, they, meantime, to supersede the consuls and tribunes in the exercise of the government (451 B.C.). They were to equalize the laws, and to write them down. The story of the mission to Athens for the study of the laws of _Solon_, is not worthy of credit. There is no doubt, however, that many obstacles were put in the way of the project by the conservative patricians, and that one of their order, _Appius Claudius_, took a prominent part, probably on the side of the people. VIRGINIUS.--Here comes in the story of _Virginia_. It is related that _Appius Claudius_ was an ambitious and bad man, who, being one of the decemvirs, wished to hold on to power. He conceived a base passion for the daughter of _Virginius_, a brave plebeian centurion, and claimed her on the pretense that she was the daughter of one of his slaves. Standing at his judgment-seat, _Virginius_, seeing that he could do nothing to save his child from the clutch of the villainous judge, plunged his dagger in her heart. This was the signal for another revolt of the people, which extorted the consent of the upper class to the sacred laws and the restoration of the tribuneship. It is a plausible theory that _Appius Claudius_ favored the plebeian claims, and that the tale told above is a later invention to his discredit.