ly had been
established. During the severe disciplinary times of the war as to
Sicily the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height
of its new position; and if it unconstitutionally usurped for the
senate functions of government which by right foil to be shared
between the magistrates and the comitia alone, it vindicated the step
by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady, pilotage
of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm and the
complications thence arising, and showed to the world that the Roman
senate was alone able, and in many respects alone deserved, to rule
the wide circle of the Italo-Hellenic states. But admitting the noble
attitude of the ruling Roman senate in opposition to the outward foe
--an attitude crowned with the noblest results--we may not overlook
the fact, that in the less conspicuous, and yet far more important
and far more difficult, administration of the internal affairs of the
state, both the treatment of the existing arrangements and the new
institutions betray an almost opposite spirit, or, to speak more
correctly, indicate that the opposite tendency has already acquired
the predominance in this field.

Decline in the Administration

In relation, first of all, to the individual burgess the government
was no longer what it had been. The term "magistrate" meant a man who
was more than other men; and, if he was the servant of the community,
he was for that very reason the master of every burgess. But the
tightness of the rein was now visibly relaxed. Where coteries and
canvassing flourish as they did in the Rome of that age, men are chary
of forfeiting the reciprocal services of their fellows or the favour
of the multitude by stern words and impartial discharge of official
duty. If now and then magistrates appeared who displayed the gravity
and the sternness of the olden time, they were ordinarily, like Cotta
(502) and Cato, new men who had not sprung from the bosom of the
ruling class. It was already something singular, when Paullus, who
had been named commander-in-chief against Perseus, instead of
tendering his thanks in the usual manner to the burgesses, declared
to them that he presumed they had chosen him as general because
they accounted him the most capable of command, and requested them
accordingly not to help him to command, but to be silent and obey.

As to Military Discipline and Administration of Justice

The supremacy and hege