A centurion, named Virginius, had an only daughter, named Virginia, whom her father, with a want of caution pardonable, perhaps, in a widower, permitted to go backwards and forwards alone through the public streets to a private day-school.[20] The young lady, in all the playful innocence of sixteen, was in the habit of dancing and singing along the thoroughfare, when the smallness of her feet, and the beauty of her voice, struck the eye and ear of Appius. According to some authorities, Virginia was attended by a nurse-maid; but it is scarcely necessary to remark, that the same fatal fascination, which in military neighbourhoods attracts female attention from children that ought to be, to men that are, in arms, was no less powerful in the Via Sacra than in Rotten Row,--by the banks of the Tiber, than on the shores of the Serpentine. One morning, as Virginia was passing through the market-place, on her way to the seminary, with her tablets and school-bag--or more familiarly speaking, her slate and satchel--on her arm, a minion, under the dominion of Appius, seized an opportunity for seizing the maiden by the wrist. The nurse was either absent, or more probably talking to one of the officers on duty round the corner; for the fasces were as irresistible to the female servants of the day, as the honied words and oilskin capes of a similar class of officials at a much later period. Virginia screamed for assistance, and they only who have heard the cry of a female in distress, can imagine the shrillness of the shriek that rang through the market. Marcus--for such was the minion's name--was instantly surrounded by a circle of respectable tradesmen, who knew and desired to rescue Virginia. The smith, though he had other irons in the fire, left his bellows to deal Marcus a blow; the butcher, with uplifted cleaver, was preparing a most extensive chop; and the money-changer was just on the point of paying off the ruffian in a new kind of coin, when he declared Virginia to be his slave, and announced himself as the client of the dreaded Appius. At this formidable name, the smith's work seemed to be done, the butcher became a senseless block, and there was a sudden change in the note of the money-changer.