Note 803 — Chapter VII · THE TOWNS.

In the cities of the Roman empire with Jus Italicum a statute of Marsyas or Silenus was erected in the forum. Servius ad Æneid. iv. 58. “Patrique Lyæo.—Urbibus libertatis est deus, unde etiam Marsyas, minister eius, per civitates in foro positus, libertatis indicium est; qui erecta manu testatur nihil urbi deesse.” So also Æneid, iii. 20. The reader of Horace will remember the Marsyas in the Forum as symbolizing the magistrate’s jurisdiction. Whether the Germanic populations derived their pillar, figure or statue from the Roman custom seems uncertain: certain however it is that the Rolandseule, the pillar or figure of Orlando, (and, as is sometimes said, of Charlemagne) denotes equally “nihil urbi deesse.”