3.48
The decemvir, utterly
abandoned to his passion, addressed the crowd and
told them that he had ascertained not only through
the insolent abuse of Icilius on the previous day
and the violent behaviour of Verginius, which the
Roman people could testify to, but mainly from
certain definite information received, that all
through the night meetings had been held in the City
to organise a seditious movement. Forewarned of the
likelihood of disturbance, he had come down into the
Forum with an armed escort, not to injure peaceable
citizens, but to uphold the authority of the
government by putting down the disturbers of public
tranquillity. "It will therefore," he proceeded, "be
better for you to keep quiet. Go, lictor, remove the
crowd and clear a way for the master to take
possession of his slave." When, in a transport of
rage, he had thundered out these words, the people
fell back and left the deserted girl a prey to
injustice. Verginius, seeing no prospect of help
anywhere, turned to the tribunal. "Pardon me,
Appius, I pray you, if I have spoken disrespectfully
to you, pardon a father's grief. Allow me to
question the nurse here, in the maiden's presence,
as to what are the real facts of the case, that if I
have been falsely called her father, I may leave her
with the greater resignation." Permission being
granted, he took the girl and her nurse aside to the
booths near the temple of Venus Cloacina, now known
as the "New Booths," and there, snatching up a
butcher's knife, he plunged it into her breast,
saying, "In this the only way in which I can, I
vindicate, my child, thy freedom." Then, looking
towards the tribunal, "By this blood, Appius, I
devote thy head to the infernal gods." Alarmed at
the outcry which arose at this terrible deed, the
decemvir ordered Verginius to be arrested.
Brandishing the knife, he cleared the way before
him, until, protected by a crowd of sympathisers, he
reached the city gate. Icilius and Numitorius took
up the lifeless body and showed it to the people;
they deplored the villainy of Appius, the
ill-starred beauty of the girl, the terrible
compulsion under which the father had acted. The
matrons, who followed with angry cries, asked, "Was
this the condition on which they were to rear
children, was this the reward of modesty and
purity?" with other manifestations of that womanly
grief, which, owing to their keener sensibility, is
more demonstrative, and so expresses itself in more
moving and pitiful fashion. The men, and especially
Icilius, talked of nothing but the abolition of the
tribunitian power and the right of appeal and loudly
expressed their indignation at the condition of
public affairs.