the Senate that governed.

=The Offices.=--Being magistrate or senator in Rome is not a
profession. Magistrates or senators spend their time and their money
without receiving any salary. A magistracy in Rome is before all an
honor. Entrance to it is to nobles, at most to knights, but always to
the rich; but these come to the highest magistracies only after they
have occupied all the others. The man who aims one day to govern Rome
must serve in the army during ten campaigns. Then he may be elected
quaestor and he receives the administration of the state treasury.
After this he becomes aedile, charged with the policing of the city and
with the provision of the corn supply. Later he is elected praetor and
gives judgment in the courts. Later yet, elected consul, he commands
an army and presides over the assemblies. Then only may he aspire to
the censorship. This is the highest round of the ladder and may be
reached hardly before one's fiftieth year. The same man has therefore,
been financier, administrator, judge, general, and governor before
arriving at this original function of censor, the political
distribution of the Roman people. This series of offices is what is
called the "order of the honors." Each of these functions lasts but
one year, and to rise to the one next higher a new election is
necessary. In the year which precedes the voting one must show one's
self continually in the streets, "circulate" as the Romans say
(_ambire_: hence the word "ambition"), to solicit the suffrages of the
people. For all this time it is the custom to wear a white toga, the
very sense of the word "candidate" (white garment).

FOOTNOTES:

[117] Probably some of the plebeians originated in non-noble Roman
families.--ED.

[118] We know the story of this contest only through Livy and Dionysius
of Halicarnassus; their very dramatic account has become celebrated, but
it is only a legend frequently altered by falsifiers.

[119] The pontificate was opened to the plebeians by the Ogulnian Law of
300 B.C. The first plebeian pontifex maximus was in 254 B.C. Livy,
Epitome, xviii.--ED.

[120] This qualification was set in the last century of the
republic.--ED.

[121] He cites several of their old proverbs: "A bad farmer is one who
buys what his land can raise." "It is bad economy to do in the day what
can be done at night."

[122] After the completion of the census.--ED.

CHAPTER XX

ROMAN CONQUEST

THE ROMAN ARMY

=Mi