Claudius, Appius, a Roman decemvir and patrician in 451 B.C.; outraged Virginia, a beautiful plebeian damsel, whom her father, on discovering of the crime, killed with a knife snatched from a butcher's stall, rousing thereby the popular rage against the decemvir, who was cast into prison, where he put an end to himself, 449 B.C.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Claudian * Claudius, Appius