n to the senate was
thrown open to persons belonging to the ruling families without
distinction as to ability, while not only were the poorer and humbler
ranks of the population utterly precluded from access to the offices
of government, but all Roman burgesses not belonging to the hereditary
aristocracy were practically excluded, not indeed exactly from the
senate, but from the two highest magistracies, the consulship and the
censorship. After Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius,(16) no instance
can be pointed out of a consul who did not belong to the social
aristocracy, and probably no instance of the kind occurred at all.
But the number of the -gentes-, which appear for the first time in the
lists of consuls and censors in the half-century from the beginning of
the war with Hannibal to the close of that with Perseus, is extremely
limited; and by far the most of these, such as the Flaminii, Terentii,
Porcii, Acilii, and Laelii, may be referred to elections by the
opposition, or are traceable to special aristocratic connections.
The election of Gaius Laelius in 564, for instance, was evidently
due to the Scipios. The exclusion of the poorer classes from the
government was, no doubt, required by the altered circumstances of the
case. Now that Rome had ceased to be a purely Italian state and had
adopted Hellenic culture, it was no longer possible to take a small
farmer from the plough and to set him at the head of the community.
But it was neither necessary nor beneficial that the elections should
almost without exception be confined to the narrow circle of the
curule houses, and that a "new man" could only make his way into that
circle by a sort of usurpation.(17) No doubt a certain hereditary
character was inherent not merely in the nature of the senate as
an institution, in so far as it rested from the outset on a
representation of the clans,(18) but in the nature of aristocracy
generally, in so far as statesmanly wisdom and statesmanly experience
are bequeathed from the able father to the able son, and the inspiring
spirit of an illustrious ancestry fans every noble spark within the
human breast into speedier and more brilliant flame. In this sense
the Roman aristocracy had been at all times hereditary; in fact, it
had displayed its hereditary character with great naivete in the old
custom of the senator taking his sons with him to the senate, and of
the public magistrate decorating his sons, as it were by anticipa