On the banks of the river Sze, to the north of the capital city of Loo, his disciples buried him, and for three years they mourned at his grave.  Even such marked respect as this fell short of the homage which Tsze-kung, his most faithful disciple, felt was due to him, and for three additional years that loving follower testified by his grief his reverence for his master.  “I have all my life had the heaven above my head,” said he, “but I do not know its height; and the earth under my feet, but I know not its thickness.  In serving Confucius, I am like a thirsty man, who goes with his pitcher to the river and there drinks his fill, without knowing the river’s depth.”

ROME ESTABLISHED AS A REPUBLIC

INSTITUTION OF TRIBUNES

B.C. 510-494

HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL

The republic of Rome was the outcome of a sudden revolution caused by the crimes of the House of Tarquin, an Etruscan family who had reached the highest power at Rome.  The indignation raised by the rape of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, and the suicide of the outraged lady at Collatia, moved her father, in conjunction with Lucius Junius Brutus and Publius Valerius, to start a rebellion.  The people were assembled by curiae, or wards, and voted that Tarquinius Superbus should be stripped of the kingly power, and that he and all his family should be banished from Rome.

This was accordingly done; and, instead of kings, consuls were appointed to wield the supreme power.  These consuls were elected annually at the comitia centuriata and they had sovereign power granted them by a vote of the comitia curiata.  The first consuls chosen were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.

What is known as the Secession to the Sacred Hill took place when the plebeians of Rome, in the early days of the Republic, indignant at the oppression and cruelty of the patricians, left the city en masse and gathered with hostile manifestations at a hill, Mons Sacer, some distance from Rome.  It was here Menenius Agrippa conciliated them by reciting the famous fable of “The Belly and the Members.”  After this the people were induced to come to terms with the patricians and to return to the city.

The people had, however, gained a great advantage by their bold defiance of the consular and patrician class, who had practically been supreme in the state, had been oppressive money-lenders, and had controlled the decisions of the law courts.  It was not in vain that the people now demanded that as the two consuls were practically elected to further the interests of the upper class, so they, the plebeians, should have the election of two tribunes to protect them from wrong and oppression.  These new officers were duly appointed, and eventually their number was increased to ten.  Their