n that five hundred years' interregnum of
extraordinary deeds and ordinary men. So long as Appius Claudius took
an active part in public life, in his official conduct as well as his
general carriage he disregarded laws and customs on all hands with the
hardihood and sauciness of an Athenian; till, after having long
retired from the political stage, the blind old man, returning as it
were from the tomb at the decisive Moment, overcame king Pyrrhus in
the senate, and first formally and solemnly proclaimed the complete
sovereignty of Rome over Italy.(53) But the gifted man came too early
or too late; the gods made him blind on account of his untimely
wisdom. It was not individual genius that ruled in Rome and through
Rome in Italy; it was the one immoveable idea of a policy--propagated
from generation to generation in the senate--with the leading maxims
of which the sons of the senators became already imbued, when in the
company of their fathers they went to the council and there at the
door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they
were destined at some future time to fill. Immense successes were
thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too is followed by her
Nemesis. In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence
on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the
rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human
character were extinguished. Rome reached a greatness such as no other
state of antiquity attained; but she dearly purchased her greatness at
the sacrifice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon and of
the inward freedom of Hellenic life.

Notes for Book II Chapter VIII

1. I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order

2. II. I. Right of Appeal

3. II. III. The Senate, Its Composition

4. II. I. Law and Edict

5. II. III. Censorship, the Magistrates, Partition and Weakening of
the Consular Powers

6. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

7. I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the Community

8. I. V. The Housefather and His Household, note

9. II. III. Praetorship

10. II. III. Praetorship, II. V. Revision of the Municipal
Constitutions, Police Judges

11. The view formerly adopted, that these -tres viri- belonged to the
earliest period, is erroneous, for colleges of magistrates with odd
numbers are foreign to the oldest state-arrangements (Chronol. p. 15,
note 12). Probably the well-accredited ac