set
aside, for the purifying of the supreme governing board
from its corrupt and pernicious elements, were daily demanded
with a loud voice by the orators of the popular party.

Want of Results from the Democratic Agitation

But with all this no progress was made. There was scandal
and outcry enough, but no real result was attained by this exposure
of the government according to and beyond its deserts. The material
power still lay, so long as there was no military interference,
in the hands of the burgesses of the capital; and the "people"
that thronged the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws
in the Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate.
The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude,
where its own immediate interest was at stake; this was the reason
for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-law. But it was not
to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness
on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform. What Demosthenes
said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans
of this period--the people were very zealous for action, so long
as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms;
but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had
heard in the market-place. However those democratic agitators might
stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material
was wanting. The government knew this, and allowed no sort
of concession to be wrung from it on important questions
of principle; at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant
amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.
Any concessions that did take place, came not so much from the pressure
of the democracy as from the attempts at mediation of the moderate
aristocracy. But of the two laws which the single still surviving
leader of this section Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679,
that which concerned the tribunals was again set aside
in the very next year; and the second, which abolished the Sullan
enactment that those who had held the tribunate should be disqualified
for undertaking other magistracies, but allowed the other limitations
to continue, merely--like every half-measure--excited the displeasure
of both parties.

The party of conservatives friendly to reform which lost
its most notable head by the early death of Cotta occurring soon
after (about 681) dwindled away more and more--crushed between
the e