family. The genius and spirit of the Roman satirists survived the
liberty of their country, and were not extinguished by the cruel
despotism of the Julian and Flavian Emperors. The great poet who
told the story of Domitian's turbot was the legitimate successor
of those forgotten minstrels whose songs animated the factions of
the infant Republic.

Those minstrels, as Niebuhr has remarked, appear to have
generally taken the popular side. We can hardly be mistaken in
supposing that, at the great crisis of the civil conflict, they
employed themselves in versifying all the most powerful and
virulent speeches of the Tribunes, and in heaping abuse on the
leaders of the aristocracy. Every personal defect, every domestic
scandal, every tradition dishonorable to a noble house, would be
sought out, brought into notice, and exaggerated. The illustrious
head of the aristocratical party, Marcus Furius Camillus, might
perhaps be, in some measure, protected by his venerable age and
by the memory of his great services to the state. But Appius
Claudius Crassus enjoyed no such immunity. He was descended from
a long line of ancestors distinguished by their haughty demeanor,
and by the inflexibility with which they had withstood all the
demands of the Plebeian order. While the political conduct and
the deportment of the Claudian nobles drew upon them the fiercest
public hatred, they were accused of wanting, if any credit is due
to the early history of Rome, a class of qualities which, in a
military commonwealth, is sufficient to cover a multitude of
offences. The chiefs of the family appear to have been eloquent,
versed in civil business, and learned after the fashion of their
age; but in war they were not distinguished by skill or valor.
Some of them, as if conscious where their weakness lay, had, when