be Romans or die: not being able to obtain
this by cabals and entreaties, they had recourse to arms; and rising
in all that part of Italy opposite to the Ionian sea, the rest of the
allies were going to follow their example. Rome, being now forced to
combat against those who were, if I may be allowed the figure, the
hands with which they shackled the universe, was upon the brink of
ruin; the Romans were going to be confined merely to their walls: they
therefore granted this so much wished-for privilege to the allies who
had not yet been wanting in fidelity; and they indulged it, by
insensible degrees, to all other nations.

But now Rome was no longer that city the inhabitants of which had
breathed one and the same spirit, the same love for liberty, the same
hatred of tyranny; a city in which a jealousy of the power of the
Senate and of the prerogatives of the great (ever accompanied with
respect) was only a love of equality. The nations of Italy being made
citizens of Rome, every city brought thither its genius, its
particular interests, and its dependence on some mighty protector:
Rome, being now rent and divided, no longer formed one entire body,
and men were no longer citizens of it but in a kind of fictitious way;
as there were no longer the same magistrates, the same walls, the same
gods, the same temples, the same burying-places, Rome was no longer
beheld with the same eyes; the citizens were no longer fired with the
same love for their country, and the Roman sentiments were
obliterated.

Cities and nations were now invited to Rome by the ambitious, to
disconcert the suffrages, or influence them in their own favor; the
public assemblies were so many conspiracies against the state, and a
tumultuous crowd of seditious wretches was dignified with the title of
Comitia. The authority of the people and their laws--nay, that people
themselves--were no more than so many chimeras; and so universal was
the anarchy of those times that it was not possible to determine
whether the people had made a law or not.

Authors enlarge very copiously on the divisions which proved the
destruction of Rome; but their readers seldom discover those divisions
to have been always necessary and inevitable. The grandeur of the
republic was the only source of that calamity, and exasperated
popular tumults into civil wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented;
and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad
could not be