[The views embodied in the text at pages 292 et seq., regarding the political position of Appius the Decemvir have been abandoned by Dr. Mommsen, since the preparation of his third edition, in favour of those which he has briefly in. dicated in the note at page 292, and which are fully illustrated in the subjoined disquisition read by him at the sitting of the Academy on the 4th March, 1861. I have given it almost entire.—TR.]

The patrician clan of the Claudii played a leading part in the history of Rome for some five hundred years. Our object in this inquiry is to make some contribution towards a proper estimate of its political position.

We are accustomed to regard this Claudiau gens as the very incarnation of the patriciate, and its leaders as the champions of the aristocratic party and the conservatives in opposition to the plebeians and the democrats; and this view, in fact, already pervades the works which form our authorities. In the little, indeed, which we possess belonging to the period of the republic, and particularly in the numerous writings of Cicero, there occurs no hint of the kind; for the circumstance, that Cicero in one special instance (ad Fam. iii. 7, 5), when treating of the persons of Appius and Lentulus, uses Appietas and Lentulitas—as what they were—superlative types of the Roman nobility, by no means falls under this category. It is in Livy that we first meet with the view which is now current.