# 46. How it comes about that in a City a Family retains for a Long Time the same Customs

It would seem not only that one city differs from another in its customs and in its institutions, and produces men who are more stern or more effeminate; but one finds a like difference in the same city between this and that family. One meets with this in every city, and in the city of Rome one reads of many such cases; for one finds that the Manlii have ever been stern and obstinate, the Publicoli kindly and devoted to the people, the Appii ambitious and hostile to the plebs; and so of many other families, each of which has characteristics which distinguish it from the others.

This can scarce be wholly due to heredity, for intermarriage between different families would bring about variation; so it must needs be set down to the different way in which this family and that educates its children. For when a child of tender years begins to understand, it makes a great difference that he should hear some things spoken of with approval and some things with disapproval, since this must needs make an impression on him, by which later on his own conduct will be regulated in all the walks of life. If it were not so, it would have been impossible for the Appii to have had the same desires, and to have been moved by the same passions, as Titus Livy says many of them were. Thus, to take the last, who was appointed censor. When his colleague resigned his post – at the end of eighteen months, as the law required, Appius refused to resign, alleging that he was entitled to hold the post for five years, according to the first law which the censors had introduced; and, though numerous meetings were held to discuss the question and numerous disturbances arose, in spite of this and of his action being contrary to the will of the people and of the majority in the senate, there was no way of making him resign. So, too, whoever reads the speech he made against Publius Sempronius, the tribune of the plebs, will see that it is full of that arrogance which characterized the Appii, and, on the other hand, will note what goodness and humanity was shown by the great bulk of the citizens, and how ready they were to obey the laws of their country and the auspices.