man power because
many-men power had become impossible. This growth was caused not only,
nor at first even chiefly, by the grasping character of Rome's
statesmen, but by the increase of the rabble and the consequent
unmanageable character of her population, except under the firm hand of
a single master. And the reason why it took one hundred years of civil
war to change the republic into the empire was not because the spirit of
the republic was so slow in dying that its death struggles filled a
century, but merely because the republic died too easily and the way to
one-man power was so simple that there were too many candidates for the
position, and hence the civil wars between them. These civil wars were
bound to continue until the bitter lessons of experience had taught men
not only how to gain the supreme control, which was relatively easy, but
how to keep it and exclude rivals, which was much more difficult. The
ambitious leaders of this century did not have to create a throne; that
was ready to their hand. Their task was only to put defences around it.
Even these defences of it were not directly against the people, for the
people had no desire to overthrow the throne, but merely against the
rival candidates. Step by step from Tiberius Gracchus to Gaius Gracchus,
and on to Marius, to Sulla, to Pompey, to Julius Caesar, possession
became more and more permanent; until from being a mere momentary
position, it became nine points of the law, and Octavian made the tenure
perfect by adding an almost religious reverence to his person in the
title _Augustus_.

In the main the foreign wars of the second century before Christ gave
place to the Civil War at home, but there was one exception to this, the
war with Mithradates, king of Pontus, which on various occasions during
the early part of the century took large bodies of Romans to the Orient.
And as though to supplement this knowledge of the East, in the closing
half of the century the field of the civil struggle was enlarged so that
it too included the East and South-East. We have already seen so many
instances of the effects of political events on the course of Roman
religion that it is a matter of no surprise to us to see that both of
these struggles, the Civil War and the Oriental wars, left their marks
on religion. It would be much more surprising if they had not done so.
In the struggle of the rivals at home every possible weapon was
employed, and it was soon discover