LICHTWER, MAGNUS GOTTFRIED. 



LICINIUS 8TOLO. 



nude himself thoroughly muter of our language. During this Moond 

 residence among us, which was of iome continuance, be WM admitted 

 into Uw highest litermrj circles. He alco studied our national character 

 with that shrewdness peculiar to him, and laid in that stock of infor- 

 mation which he afterwards turned to such excellent account in hi* 

 work on Hogarth. 



From the period of his return to that of hia death he resided con- 

 stantly at Guttingen, devoted entirely to the duties of his professorship, 

 to his pen and his studies. He latterly became subject to attacks 

 of hypochondria, which induced him to lead the life of a recluse, 

 without other society than that of an excellent wife and hia five 

 children. ThU malady however did not interrupt his studies, to 

 which he continued a* attached as ever, neither did it prevent his 

 carrying on a very extensive epistolary correspondence almost to the 

 day of his death, February 34th, 1799. 



Besides the already-mentioned commentary on Hogarth (of which 

 some specimens appeared several years ago in the ' London Magazine,' 

 and from which there are also some extracts in the article entitled 

 ' Lichtenberg and Hogarth,' ' Foreign Quarterly,' No. 32), his other 

 works are exceedingly numerous, and no less varied ; for while some 

 are entirely scientific, on subjects of astronomy and physics, others 

 are pieces of wit and satire, frequently of the most pungent kind, and 

 occasionally of the most extravagant and whimsical cast. Among 

 these productions of humour the titles of one or two may be mentioned 

 as conveying some idea of their subjects, namely, ' The Mad-house for 

 Opinions and Inventions ;' ' A Sentimental Journey to Laputa ;' ' Con- 

 solation for those Unfortunates who are no Original Geniuses ;' ' A 

 Patriotic Contribution to the Study of German Methology (Drunk- 

 enness) ;' and the ' Bedlamites' Petition.' 



LICHTWER, MAGNUS GOTTFREID, born at Wurzen, in Saxony, 

 January 30tb, 1719, though only one of the minor poets of Germany, 

 may be considered almost the first in the rank of its fabulists. When 

 only two years old he lost his father, but his mother's circumstances 

 enabled her to bestow upon him a good education. At her death, in 

 1737, the further charge of his studies devolved upon his guardian, 

 the Stiftsrath Zahn, by whom be was sent to Leipzig, where he applied 

 himself more particularly to jurisprudence, but also made himself 

 master of French and Italian. In 1741 he went to Dresden, in the 

 hope of there obtaining some office or appointment, but after fruitlessly 

 waiting two years, quitted it for Wittenberg, where he obtained the 

 degree of Doctor of Laws, and delivered lectures in jurisprudence, until 

 the breaking of a bloodvessel compelled him to abstain from the 

 exertion of speaking in public. He now took up his pen and produced 

 his ' Fables,' the first edition of which appeared anonymously in 1748. 

 The following year he quitted Wittenberg, and went to Halberetadt, 

 where his mother's brother was one of the dignitaries of the cathedral. 

 This change proved highly advantageous to him, being the means of 

 his obtaining some important charges. In 1758 he published a new 

 edition of his 'Fables,' with his name prefixed to it, and also his 

 didactic poem 'Das Kecht der Vernuuft;' and in 1762 a ' Translation 

 of Minutius Felix,' with notes. He died July 7th, 1783. The poem 

 above mentioned is by no means equal to many others of the same 

 class in the language : it is an exposition of Wolfs philosophy, formally 

 treated, instead of the dryness of the subject being at all relieved or 

 adorned by poetical illustration of the doctrine. His 'Fables,' on 

 the contrary, are master-pieces ; many of them strikingly original in 

 subject, teree and pointed in style, and admirable in their moral. 



LICINIUS FLAVIUS VALERIUS, Emperor of the East, by birth 

 a Dacian peasant, but becoming the companion in arms and friend of 

 the Emperor Galerius, was raised by him, in November, 307 A.D., on the 

 death of Severus, to the rank of Augustus, with the command of the 

 Illyrian provinces, although he had not passed through the subordinate 

 grade of Caesar. Licinius, wholly uneducated, remorselessly cruel, 

 was without any redeeming quality except that of courage. The 

 events of his career are sufficiently noticed under CONSTANTINUS, 

 DIOCLETIANUB, and MAXIMINUS. By the death of Maximinus, whom 

 he totally defeated in 813, Licinius became undisputed emperor of the 

 East, Constantino in like manner reigning over the West'. War broke 

 out between the two emperors in 315, but after sustaining a series of 

 reverses Licinius obtained peace by the cession of the whole of Greece 

 and Macedonia, and the lower valley of the Danube. The peace lasted 

 till 323, when a fresh war ensued, but was soon brought to a close by 

 the decisive victory of Chalcedon (September 323). Licinius was at 

 first merely banished to Thessalonica, but was soon after (324) put to 

 death by command of Constantine. [CONSTAMTINUS.] 



LICI'NIUS STOLO. Caius Lacinius Calvus Stolo, of a distin- 

 guished plebeian family at Rome, was made tribune of the people, 

 together with his friend L. Sextius Lateranus, in the year B.C. 375. 

 These tribunes brought forward three ' rogations,' that is to say, bills 

 or projects of law, for the comitiu or assembly of the tribes to decide 

 upon : 1. That in future no more military tribunes should be 

 appointed, but two annual consuls as formerly, and that one of the 

 two should always be a plebeian. The occasional appointment of 

 military tribunes, part of whom might be chosen from among the 

 plebeians, was a device of the senate to prevent tlie plebeians from 

 obtaining access to the consulship. 2. To deduct from the capital of 

 all existing debts from one citizen to another the sums which bad 

 been paid by tlie debtor as interest, and the remaining principal to be 



discharged in three years by three equal payments. This seems, 

 according to our modern notion* of money transactions, a very sum- 

 mary and not very honest way of settling standing engagements ; but 

 if we carry ourselves back to that remote period of Roman society, 

 and take into consideration the enormous rate of interest demanded, 

 the necessities of the poorer citizens, who were called from their homes 

 and fields to fight the battles of their country, and had no means of 

 supporting thtir families in the mean time except the ruinous one of 

 borrowing money from the wealthy, who were mostly patricians, and 

 also the fearful power which the law gave to the creditor over the 

 body of his debtor, and the atrocious manner in which that power 

 was used, or rather abused, in many instances, such as those reported 

 by Livy (ii. 23 ; vi- 14 ; viii. 28), we shall judge with more lenity of 

 the proposition of Licinius. The third rogation has been a subject of 

 much perplexity to modern inquirers. Its object, as briefly expressed 

 by Livy, was that " no one should pouat (poesideret) more than five 

 hundred jugera (about 333 acres) of land," and until lately it has been 

 literally understood by most readers of Roman history as fixing a 

 maximum to private property. But Beaufort, and more lately Hoyne, 

 Niebuhr, and Savigny, have shown that the limitation referred to the 

 holding of land belonging to the ager pvblicut, or public domain of 

 the state ; and when we reflect upon the insignificant extent of the 

 original territory of Rome, and that it became gradually enlarged by 

 the plunder or appropriation of a part of the land of the neighbouring 

 nations, it appears evident that most of the large estates possessed by 

 the patricians must have been portions of this conquered land, which 

 was considered as public property, but which individuals of the 

 influential class in the state occupied, cultivated, and held as tenants 

 at will, they and their descendants paying to the state a tenth of all 

 grain, a fifth on the produce of plantations and vineyards, and n 

 certain tax per head of cattle grazing on the public pasture. This 

 was the kind of poaetsion which the Licinian rogation purposed to 

 limit and regulate. Licinius proposed that all those who had more 

 than 500 jugera should be made to give up the surplus, which was ty 

 bo distributed among those who had no property, and that in future 

 every citizen was to be entitled to a share of newly conquered land, 

 with the same restriction and subject to the same duties. This might 

 be considered as a bill for the better distribution of plunder among 

 those engaged in a plundering expedition, for the land thus acquired 

 and distributed cannot be compared to real property as held through- 

 out Europe in our days; and this reflection may perhaps sirve to 

 moderate somewhat the warmth of our sympathy in reading of the 

 complaints of the Roman plebeians concerning the unequal distribution 

 of land which had been taken by violence from a third party, the 

 other nations of Italy, who were the real sufferers. 



The patricians, who had had till then the largest share of the common 

 pluuder, opposed the utmost resistance to the passing of these three 

 laws. They gained over to their side the other tribunes, who put 

 tbeir veto on the bills. But at the end of that year Licinius and 

 Sextius put their own veto on the election of the new military 

 tribunes, and being themselves re-elected by the tribes every year, 

 they renewed for five years the same opposition to the election of the 

 curule magistrates, so that the republic fell into a kind of anarchy. 

 In the fifth year, B.C. 370, the inhabitants of Velitraj, a Roman colony, 

 revolted, made incursions into the Roman territory, and besieged 

 Tusculum, the ally of Rome. Licinius and Sextius now waived their 

 opposition, the comitia were held, and six military tribunes were 

 elected, and, as the war continued, six more were appointed in the 

 following year, Licinius and Sextius meantime continuing to be 

 re-elected every year as tribunes of the people. Having gained over 

 to their side tbree more of their colleagues, they again brought 

 forward their bills, asking the senators " how they could pretend to 

 retain more than 500 jugera of laud, while a plebeian was only allowed 

 two jugera, hardly enough to build himself a cabin upon, and to 

 supply him with a burial-place when he died." These expressions of 

 Livy's text confirm Niebuhr's opinion that the whole question was 

 about the ager publicus, or conquered land, of which the plebeians 

 who had served in the army received small allotments of two or more, 

 but never more than seven jugera (between four and five acres) each. 

 Licinius then went on to ask the patricians, who still opposed his 

 other bill concerning the debtors, " whether they delighted in having 

 their houses full of plebeians in fetters, so that wherever a patrician 

 dwelt there must be a private dungeon also .' " And then turning to 

 the plebeians, he told them that the surest remedy for such ovils was 

 contained in his third bill, namely, that they should always have one 

 of the two consuls chosen from their own body. However, all pro- 

 ceedings concerning those laws were again suspended fur that year, 

 the five tribunes of the people who were still in the interest of the 

 senate urging that it was proper to wait for the return of the army, 

 which was still in the field against Velitne. Six new military tribunes 

 were elected for the following year, n.c. 368. At the same time 

 Licinius and tJextius, being re-elected tribunes of the people for the 

 eighth time, resolved to bring their bills before the tribes, without 

 any regard to the intercession or veto of their colleagues. 



The senate, seeing the final struggle approaching, had recourse to a 

 last expedient : they appointed Camillas to the dictatorship. While 

 Liciuius and Sextius, having convened the tribes, sure of the people's 

 favour and regardless of the veto of their colleagues, were proceeding 



