The New International Encyclopædia/Decemviri

​DECEM′VIRI (Lat., board of ten men, from decem, ten + vir, man). The most famous body known under this title were the ten persons who were appointed (B.C. 451) as a sort of legislative committee, to draw up a code of laws at Rome. The groundwork on which the decemviri proceeded was the information which had been previously collected by three commissioners who were sent for that purpose to Greece. On the return of the commissioners, after a year’s absence, a violent dispute arose between the patricians and plebeians as to which of the orders should be intrusted with the revision of the laws. The dispute ended in favor of the patricians, and ten patrician lawgivers were consequently appointed, to whom, moreover, the whole government of the State was intrusted during the year for which they were to hold office. The experiment was eminently successful; the work of legislation was carried on with zeal and success, and the State was governed with prudence and moderation. Their labors not being quite finished, a new body of decemviri was appointed, only one, the notorious Appius Claudius, belonging to the previous commission. In their magisterial and executive capacities, the new decemviri acted in the most tyrannical manner. In place of the fasces alone being carried before the decemvir who presided for the day, as on the former occasion, each of the ten was now attended by twelve lictors, who carried not only the rods, but the axe, which was the emblem of sovereign power. Every species of outrage was committed on the persons and families of the plebeians, and when the term of their appointment expired, the decemviri refused either to resign or to allow successors to be appointed to them. At length the iniquitous decision of Appius Claudius (q.v.) in the matter of Virginia brought affairs to a climax. A popular insurrection broke forth, the decemviri were driven from their office, and the tribunes and other ordinary magistrates of the Republic were reappointed. The occurrence is the subject of one of the most spirited of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.