fore,
yet, after having found themselves, although but for a moment, on the
verge of a real mob-rule, all men who had anything to lose viewed the
existing government in a different light; it was notoriously wretched
and pernicious for the state, but the anxious dread of the still more
wretched and still more pernicious government of the proletariate had
conferred on it a relative value. The current now set so much in that
direction that the multitude tore in pieces a tribune of the people
who had ventured to postpone the return of Quintus Metellus, and the
democrats began to seek their safety in league with murderers and
poisoners--ridding themselves, for example, of the hated Metellus
by poison--or even in league with the public enemy, several of them
already taking refuge at the court of king Mithradates who was secretly
preparing for war against Rome. External relations also assumed an
aspect favourable for the government. The Roman arms were employed but
little in the period from the Cimbrian to the Social war, but everywhere
with honour. The only serious conflict was in Spain, where, during
the recent years so trying for Rome (649 seq.), the Lusitanians and
Celtiberians had risen with unwonted vehemence against the Romans.
In the years 656-661 the consul Titus Didius in the northern and the consul
Publius Crassus in the southern province not only re-established with
valour and good fortune the ascendency of the Roman arms, but also razed
the refractory towns and, where it seemed necessary, transplanted the
population of the strong mountain-towns to the plains. We shall show in
the sequel that about the same time the Roman government again directed
its attention to the east which had been for a generation neglected,
and displayed greater energy than had for long been heard of in Cyrene,
Syria, and Asia Minor. Never since the commencement of the revolution
had the government of the restoration been so firmly established, or so
popular. Consular laws were substituted for tribunician; restrictions
on liberty replaced measures of progress. The cancelling of the laws of
Saturninus was a matter of course; the transmarine colonies of Marius
disappeared down to a single petty settlement on the barbarous island
of Corsica. When the tribune of the people Sextus Titius--a caricatured
Alcibiades, who was greater in dancing and ball-playing than in
politics, and whose most prominent talent consisted in breaking the
image