overnment
was no longer what it had been. The term "magistrate" meant a man who
was more than other men; and, if he was the servant of the community,
he was for that very reason the master of every burgess. But the
tightness of the rein was now visibly relaxed. Where coteries and
canvassing flourish as they did in the Rome of that age, men are chary
of forfeiting the reciprocal services of their fellows or the favour
of the multitude by stern words and impartial discharge of official
duty. If now and then magistrates appeared who displayed the gravity
and the sternness of the olden time, they were ordinarily, like Cotta
(502) and Cato, new men who had not sprung from the bosom of the
ruling class. It was already something singular, when Paullus, who
had been named commander-in-chief against Perseus, instead of
tendering his thanks in the usual manner to the burgesses, declared
to them that he presumed they had chosen him as general because
they accounted him the most capable of command, and requested them
accordingly not to help him to command, but to be silent and obey.

As to Military Discipline and Administration of Justice

The supremacy and hegemony of Rome in the territories of the
Mediterranean rested not least on the strictness of her military
discipline and her administration of justice. Undoubtedly she was
still, on the whole, at that time infinitely superior in these
respects to the Hellenic, Phoenician, and Oriental states, which were
without exception thoroughly disorganized; nevertheless grave abuses
were already occurring in Rome. We have previously(20) pointed out
how the wretched character of the commanders-in-chief--and that not
merely in the case of demagogues chosen perhaps by the opposition,
like Gaius Flaminius and Gaius Varro, but of men who were good
aristocrats--had already in the third Macedonian war imperilled the
weal of the state. And the mode in which justice was occasionally
administered is shown by the scene in the camp of the consul Lucius
Quinctius Flamininus at Placentia (562). To compensate a favourite
youth for the gladiatorial games of the capital, which through his
attendance on the consul he had missed the opportunity of seeing, that
great lord had ordered a Boian of rank who had taken refuge in the
Roman camp to be summoned, and had killed him at a banquet with his
own hand. Still worse than the occurrence itself, to which various
parallels might be adduced, was the f