The part played by Brutus in the narrative is politically as insignificant as that of Harmodius in the overthrow of the tyranny at Athens. The political geniuses of the early Roman republic are all to be found in the great house of the Claudii[1198]. Our accounts make the family first come to Rome in the sixth year of the republic. The head of the family at that time is described by Dionysius as “of noble birth and influential through his wealth[1199].” He arrives, “bringing with him a great establishment and numerous friends and retainers.” Mommsen[1200] gives strong reasons for thinking that the family cannot have first come to Rome at so late a date. But the arrival may well have been a return from exile like that of the Alcmaeonidae to Athens after the fall of Hippias. The analogies between the Claudii and the Alcmaeonidae deserve consideration, the more so as they seem to be uninfluenced by any ancient recognition of their existence. It looks as though the wealthy Claudii, like the wealthy Alcmaeonidae, “took the commons into partnership[1201].” Mommsen has pointed out[1202] how many “well known traits of the ancient tyrannus” occur in the picture of the decemvir Appius. His contemporary Pericles was called the new Peisistratus. If there are such strong reasons for equating the early Claudii, whose historical existence can scarcely be seriously questioned, with the contemporary Alcmaeonidae, it becomes increasingly probable that the history of Rome and Athens in the sixth century ran on parallel lines. One great difference between fifth century Rome and fifth century Athens was that Athens had had her own coinage from well back into the sixth century, whereas Rome, as already mentioned, struck her first pieces about 338 B.C. No famous name is associated with these earliest pieces. [Sidenote: Appius Claudius Caecus (censor 312 B.C.):] The most prominent man in Rome during the first generation after 338 was another Claudius, the censor Appius Claudius Caecus. His greatest achievement was the epoch-making Via Appia, the first of the great series of roads that knit together the Roman Empire. [Sidenote: his public works,] The city owed to him also its first aqueduct. On these great public works he spent, without the previous sanction of the senate, the money accumulated in the treasury[1203]. The sums thus spent must have represented the first large accumulation of the new Roman currency. [Illustration: Fig. 33. _Aes graue_ with wheel.] [Sidenote: his probable connexion with Roman coinage,] Appius’ connexion with the early coinage of Rome was probably not confined to spending it. The second series of Roman _aes graue_ was coined in Campania and bears on the reverse a wheel (fig. 33). Numismatists have long associated the appearance of this wheel with the construction of the Appian way that led from Rome to the Campanian capital[1204]. [Sidenote: his numerous clients,]