Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/488

478 hand Niebuhr, though restless in the pursuit of truth, was not tormented with the feverish fastidiousness of a KaKiXore'^vo^. The argument with which he suppHes Licinius to meet Livy'^s partial objection, could scarcely have been made more forcible either in thought or expression, and accordingly it has un- dergone no other alteration than the transposition of a few sentences. The provisions of the agrarian bill are repeated with scarcely any change, but with some additional confir- mation, and some interesting illustrations derived from the author's personal familiarity with the existing state of agricul- ture in the Roman territory. Still more deserving of attention are some remarks on the change of circumstances through which the same measure which in the time of Licinius was purely wise, just, and beneficent, became in the hands of a far more virtuous patriot, the elder Gracchus, doubtful in its policy, calamitous in its consequences. The view taken in the first edition of the third bill, that relating to the adjustment between debtors and creditors, remains in sub- stance the same : only the opinion originally exprest that no laws had hitherto been enacted against usury is now retracted on grounds subsequently explained. But there is a very im- portant variation in the description of the struggle by which the bills at length became law : a fragment of the Capitoline Fasti suggests an entirely new explanation of the threatened fine which overcame the opposition of Camillus.

The next chapter. On the new curule dignities of the year 384, contains several important enlargements and cor- rections of that which discussed the same subject in the first ed.; and in particular Livy''s account of the curule aedile- ship's being thrown open to both orders is shown by the strongest evidence to be altogether erroneous. The follow- ing chapter On the domestic history down to the complete establishment of the plebeian consulship, has undergone few alterations: the most important is the distinction now intro- duced between the opposition of the senate and that of the Patres to the plebeian cause. The original chapter, On the uncial rate of interest, has been incorporated with the fol- lowing one which related the occasion and consequences of the insurrection or mutiny of 408 (413), With regard to the former subject the statement of Tacitus is now admitted