f the one year had reckoned it an
honour to serve next year on the staff of his successor, the fact that
the consular Cato took service as a military tribune under Tiberius
Sempronius Longus (560) and Manius Glabrio (563;(47)), was now
regarded as a demonstration against the new-fashioned arrogance.
Formerly the thanks of the community once for all had sufficed for
service rendered to the state: now every meritorious act seemed to
demand a permanent distinction. Already Gaius Duilius, the victor of
Mylae (494), had gained an exceptional permission that, when he walked
in the evening through the streets of the capital, he should be
preceded by a torch-bearer and a piper. Statues and monuments, very
often erected at the expense of the person whom they purported to
honour, became so common, that it was ironically pronounced a
distinction to have none. But such merely personal honours did not
long suffice. A custom came into vogue, by which the victor and his
descendants derived a permanent surname from the victories they had
won--a custom mainly established by the victor of Zama who got himself
designated as the hero of Africa, his brother as the hero of Asia, and
his cousin as the hero of Spain.(48) The example set by the higher
was followed by the humbler classes. When the ruling order did not
disdain to settle the funeral arrangements for different ranks and to
decree to the man who had been censor a purple winding-sheet, it could
not complain of the freedmen for desiring that their sons at any rate
might be decorated with the much-envied purple border. The robe, the
ring, and the amulet-case distinguished not only the burgess and the
burgess's wife from the foreigner and the slave, but also the person
who was free-born from one who had been a slave, the son of free-born,
from the son of manumitted, parents, the son of the knight and the
senator from the common burgess, the descendant of a curule house from
the common senator(49)--and this in a community where all that was
good and great was the work of civil equality!

The dissension in the community was reflected in the ranks of the
opposition. Resting on the support of the farmers, the patriots
raised a loud cry for reform; resting on the support of the mob in
the capital, demagogism began its work. Although the two tendencies
do not admit of being wholly separated but in various respects go hand
in hand, it will be necessary to consider them apart.

The P