Appius Claudius Caecus
Appius Claudius Caecus (Latin caecus = " the blind "; * to 340 BC; † 273 BC ) was a politician and statesman in the middle Roman Republic. He lived at the turn of the 4th to 3rd centuries BC
From a wealthy Roman patrician family coming, Appius Claudius Caecus made a surprisingly quick and successful career, just because he assumed the rights of the lower class, the plebeians and the freed slaves. So he allowed former slaves to participate in elections and the children of freedmen even inclusion in the Senate. He reformed the Roman legal system, published for the first time a court calendar and process formulas whose skills were up to then reserved to the pontiffs.
312 was censor Appius Claudius, consul 307 and 296 and 292 and 285 dictator.
As censor he had a drinking water pipe 312, named after him aqueduct Aqua Appia, built in Rome. From the year 311 to Appius was the most famous cobbled street of antiquity, the Via Appia, build from Rome to Capua.
Appius continued for the Latin language by a reform of the spelling and dealt with literature and rhetoric. Already blind, he taught a famous speech against an emissary of King Pyrrhus of Epirus I.; it is the earliest political speech in Latin, of which we have knowledge, and was still known at least to Cicero times.
Sallust narrated in the first ( I, 1, 2) his Epistolae ad Caesarem one of the mottoes of Appius from the carmina: " ... fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae ", a well-known "Lean " saying ( Everyone has his own fortune. ). The emphatic position of faber at the beginning of his Saturniers same time explains the meaning of the saying " permanent, industrious forging ".
Appius Claudius Caecus has blown up in the Roman state, the restriction of the full community citizenship to the residents in Rome and broke with the old financial system. Besides aqueduct and road dating from his time the Roman jurisprudence, the Roman Rhetoric ( eloquence ) and Latin grammar. From him also stir the beginnings of Latin prose writing as well as a Latin art - poetry ago. Sextus Pomponius wrote in his Digest, Appius had been so taught ( maximam scientiam habuit ) that he was ( hic Centemmanus appellatus est) therefore called " Mr. hundreds of hand."