e splendidly caparisoned, he plunged
into its depths, while a crowd of men and women showered corn and
other offerings after him. Thus we may suppose that the Curtian
Lake got its name from him, and not from Curtius Mettus, in old
time the famous soldier of Titus Tatius.

Livy, vii. 6.

[Illustration: LACUS CURTIUS
Restored]

In Mucius Scaevola, in Regulus, in Marcus Curtius, and many others the
fine qualities of the old Roman temper, pride, courage, will, devotion,
a love of their country that went beyond all other feelings, even unto
death, stand out. One can see the main lines of the character that made
the Romans what they afterwards became--the conquerors and law-givers
first of a single city, Rome, then of the whole plain of Latium in which
that city stood: then, after driving back barbarian invaders from the
north and Greek invaders from the south, of all Italy: later of the
known world.

Coriolanus

To understand this character better one may look at it from another
angle, studying a man in whom these qualities were spoiled by the faults
that belong to them. Courage may become cruelty: pride fall into
arrogance: high contempt for others will grow to selfishness and
hardness; even a high devotion to one's country may be spoiled if it
comes to mean a devotion to one's own idea of what that country should
be like and how it should treat oneself. It may then be mere
selfishness. Many men love their country not as it is but as they think
it ought to be. This may be a good and helpful feeling if what they
think it ought to be depends not on their own private wishes and welfare
only, but on that of the people as a whole. A love of country of this
kind makes men strive incessantly to make it better. But some Romans
forgot the welfare of the people as a whole. The men belonging to the
old families, men who claimed to be descended from the early settlers,
who called themselves 'patricians', that is, the fathers of the State,
were apt to consider that what they thought must be so: that they alone
knew what was right and good. The welfare of the State depended on them.
They were the leaders in the army and in the government. They had no
patience with those who said that they should not settle everything in
Rome, that their idea of what was right and patriotic was not the end of
the matter; men who said that Rome was not this class or that but the
whole people. The city was growing fast; new settlers