nds that had not to obey him--and the conduct of a war as to which,
like the expedition of Alexander, men could tell where and when
it began, but not where and when it might end. Never since Rome
stood had such power been united in the hands of a single man.

The Democratic-Military Revolution

The Gabinio-Manilian proposals terminated the struggle between
the senate and the popular party, which the Sempronian laws had begun
sixty-seven years before. As the Sempronian laws first constituted
the revolutionary party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-
Manilian first converted it from an opposition into the government;
and as it had been a great moment when the first breach
in the existing constitution was made by disregarding the veto
of Octavius, it was a moment no less full of significance
when the last bulwark of the senatorial rule fell with the withdrawal
of Trebellius. This was felt on both sides and even the indolent
souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death-
struggle; but yet the war as to the constitution terminated
in a very different and far more pitiful fashion than it had begun.
A youth in every sense noble had commenced the revolution;
it was concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type.
On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle
with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out
even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative
in club-law, with grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury.
What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained; the senate
had ceased to govern. But when the few old men who had seen
the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi,
compared that time with the present they found that everything
had in the interval changed--countrymen and citizens, state-law
and military discipline, life and manners; and well might those
painfully smile, who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period
with their realization. Such reflections however belonged
to the past. For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall
of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact. The oligarchs resembled
an army utterly broken up, whose scattered bands might serve
to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer themselves
keep the field or risk a combat on their own account. But as
the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously
beginning--the struggle b