ation of temporary power in a single hand for a
certain purpose. The Republic was no republic, as we understand the
word; nor did it ever become so, though their was always going on a
perpetual struggle to transfer the power from the nobles to the people,
in which something was always being given or pretended to be given to
the outside class. But so little was as yet understood of liberty that,
as each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the
magistrates of the State, he became also one of the oligarchical
faction. There was a continued contest, with a certain amount of good
faith on each side, on behalf of the so-called Republic--but still a
contest for power. This became so continued that a foreign war was at
times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of
the State, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each
against the other. It is probably the case that the invasion of the
Gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second Punic war, threatening
as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome, provided the
Republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence. Then
came Marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the people, and Sylla,
as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars between them, in which,
as one prevailed or the other, Rome was mastered. How Marius died, and
Sylla reigned for three bloody, fatal years, is outside the scope of our
purpose--except in this, that Cicero saw Sylla's proscriptions, and made
his first essay into public life hot with anger at the Dictator's
tyranny.

It occurs to us as we read the history of Rome, beginning with the early
Consuls and going to the death of Caesar and of Cicero, and the
accomplished despotism of Augustus, that the Republic could not have
been saved by any efforts, and was in truth not worth the saving. We are
apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so
much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the Roman form of
government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. But
it had been successful. It had made a great people, and had produced a
wide-spread civilization. Roman citizenship was to those outside the one
thing the most worthy to be obtained. That career which led the great
Romans up from the state of Quaestor to the AEdile's, Praetor's, and
Consul's chair, and thence to the rich reward of provincial government,
was held to be the highest t