Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/658

 64:6 CLAUDIUS NERO CLAUSEL decemvirs, and Appius among them, wished to make their power perpetual ; at any rate, they proved themselves arbitrary oppressors both of patricians and plebeians. On account of an in- road of the Sabines and the ^Equi, the decemvirs enlisted troops, and marched against the ene- my ; but Appius and Opius, his colleague, re- mained at Rome to maintain the power of the decemvirs. Appius now fell in love with Vir- ginia, daughter of Lucius Virginius, who was with the army, having left his daughter under the protection of Icilius. Marcus Claudius, a client of Appius, swore before the tribunal of the decemvirs that Virginia was the daughter of one of his female slaves, taken secretly by the childless wife of Virginius as her child. This scheme had been devised by Appius to bring the girl into his power. She was ar- rested and brought before the decemvir, who decided that she must follow her pretended master. But the people, incited by Icilius and her uncle Numitorius, threatened an outbreak, and Appius ordered Virginia to be brought to his own house, announcing that a final inquiry and decision in her case should take place the next day. During the night Virginius arrived from the camp, and appeared with Icilius and Numitorius all three in mourning in the forum. Appius finally adjudged the girl to his client, notwithstanding the oath and the evidence of her father, and ordered the lictors to seize and deliver her to Marcus. Virginius, seizing a knife from a butcher standing near him, stabbed his daughter, and fled to the army with Icilius and Numitorius. Two senators, Iloratius and Valerius, called on the people in the city to rise against the tyrant. At the same time Virginius, Icilius, and Numitorius appealed for vengeance to the army in their camps, which, under their leading, marched upon Rome. The decemvirs resigned, and the senate decreed the restoration of the consuls and the tribunes in their stead. Appius was put in prison, and died there; according to Livy by suicide, but according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, he was strangled by the order of the tribunes. CL U Oil's NERO, a Roman general, consul in B. C. 207, who inflicted a blow on the Cartha- ginians which contributed not a little to render the Romans victorious in the second Punic war. He was in the south of Italy contending with Hannibal, when Hasdrubal, after crossing the Alps, was advancing from the north to the assistance of his brother. Elated at having triumphed over so many difficulties, and at being on the eve of accomplishing the great object of his expedition, Hasdrubal, unconscious of danger, sent messengers to Hannibal to an- nounce his approach. These messengers fell into the hands of the Romans, and were brought into the presence of the consul, who learned from them how imminent was the danger that hung over his country and himself. On the very day in which the messengers of Hasdrubal were seized, the consul and his legions marched northward to form a junction with the army of Livius, and to overwhelm the Carthaginian with the combined strength of the two armies. Hasdrubal meantime, during his advance to- ward the south, was led by treacherous guides into an intricate and rugged region on the banks of the Metaurus, where neither his cavalry nor elephants could act, and where his army was cut to pieces and himself slain by the forces of the consuls. After this victory, which may be said to have saved Rome, Claudius Nero re- turned to the south with the head of Hasdru- bal, which he ordered to be thrown into the camp of Hannibal as an evidence of the disas- ter that had at once befallen his brother, his country, and himself. Horace's Quid debeas, o Roma, Neronilus, was written in honor of Claudius. < I. l Mil s NERO, TilM-rins father of the em- peror Tiberius, a descendant of the preceding. He served under Julius Caesar, and commanded the fleet which defeated that of Egypt at the Canopic mouth of the Nile (48 B. C.). He was made pontifex in place of P. Cornelius Scipio. On the murder of Ccesar he was so fearful of sharing his fate that he even proposed that his assassins should be rewarded. When the trium- virs quarrelled he fled to Perusia, where his eldest son Tiberius, the future emperor, was born ; and when Perusia surrendered to Oc- tavius, he escaped with his wife and child to Neapolis, whence he passed over to Sicily to Sextus Pompeius. Meeting with a cool re- ception from Pompeins, he soon departed from Sicily for Achaia, where Mark Antony was then sojourning. On the reconciliation of An- tony and Octavius he returned to Rome. His wife Livia was much younger than himself, and exceedingly beautiful. Octavius saw her, became deeply enamored of her, and demand- ed her surrender from her husband. Claudius durst not refuse, and gave up his wife as a father would his daughter, and, when the cere- mony was over, sat down to the nuptial feast with as much outward unconcern as any ordi- nary guest. He died soon after, leaving Octa- vius the guardian of his two sons. CLAISEL, Bertrand, count, a French soldier, born at Mirepoix, Dec. 12, 1772, died near Toulouse, April 21, 1842. He was a nephew of the revolutionist Jean Baptiste Clausel, en- tered the army in 1791 as sub-lieutenant, be- came in 1798 chief of Grouchy's staff in the so-called army of England, and accompanied Grouchy to Italy, when he prevailed upon Charles Emanuel IV. to abdicate, the latter presenting him with Douw's celebrated picture of the " Dropsical Woman," valued at 1,500,000 francs, in token of his regard for the manner in which he had acquitted himself of a difficult diplomatic task. Clausel presented the pic- ture to the gallery of the Louvre. In 1801 he served in Santo Domingo, after which he was general of division. In 1806 he was em- ployed in Italy, in 1808 in Dalmatia, and in 1809 he took possession of the Illyrian prov-