way to the pride of his nature, and made himself hated. There was a war
with the Æqui, in which the Romans were beaten. Old Sicinius Dentatus
said it was owing to bad management, and, as he had been in one hundred
and twenty battles, everybody believed him. Thereupon Appius Claudius
sent for him, begged for his advice, and asked him to join the army that
he might assist the commanders. They received him warmly, and, when he
advised them to move their camp, asked him to go and choose a place, and
sent a guard with him of one hundred men. But these were really wretches
instructed to kill him, and as soon as he was in a narrow rocky pass
they set upon him. The brave old warrior set his back against a rock and
fought so fiercely that he killed many, and the rest durst not come near
him, but climbed up the rock and crushed him with stones rolled down on
his head. Then they went back with a story that they had been attacked
by the enemy, which was believed, till a party went out to bury the
dead, and found there were only Roman corpses all lying round the
crushed body of Sicinius, and that none were stripped of their armor or
clothes. Then the true history was found out, but the Decemvirs
sheltered the commanders, and would believe nothing against them.

Appius Claudius soon after did what horrified all honest men even more
than this treachery to the brave old soldier. The Forum was not only the
place of public assembly for state affairs, but the regular
market-place, where there were stalls and booths for all the wares that
Romans dealt in--meat stalls, wool shops, stalls where wine was sold in
earthenware jars or leathern bottles, and even booths where reading and
writing was taught to boys and girls, who would learn by tracing letters
in the sand, and then by writing them with an iron pen on a waxen table
in a frame, or with a reed upon parchment. The children of each family
came escorted by a slave--the girls by their nurse, the boys by one
called a pedagogue.