hom he governed from that of
the Roman community and to treat them as conflicting, far more
resembled a Persian satrap than one of the commissioners of the Roman
senate at the time of the Samnite wars. The man, moreover, who had
just conducted a legalized military tyranny abroad, could with
difficulty find his way back to the common civic level, which
distinguished between those who commanded and those who obeyed, but
not between masters and slaves. Even the government felt that their
two fundamental principles--equality within the aristocracy, and the
subordination of the power of the magistrates to the senatorial
college--began in this instance to give way in their hands. The
aversion of the government to the acquisition of new provinces and to
the whole provincial system; the institution of the provincial
quaestorships, which were intended to take at least the financial
power out of the hands of the governors; and the abolition of the
arrangement--in itself so judicious--for a longer tenure of such
offices,(36) very clearly evince the anxiety felt by the more far-
seeing of the Roman statesmen as to the fruits of the seed thus sown.
But diagnosis is not cure. The internal government of the nobility
continued to follow the direction once given to it; and the decay of
the administration and of the financial system--paving the way for
future revolutions and usurpations--steadily pursued its course,
if not unnoticed, yet unchecked.

The Opposition

If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the old aristocracy
of the clans, and if the encroachment on the other burgesses as
respected the joint enjoyment of political rights was in the one
case -de jure-, in the other only -de facto-, the second form of
inferiority was for that very reason worse to bear and worse to throw
off than the first. Attempts to throw it off were, as a matter of
course, not wanting. The opposition rested on the support of the
public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate: in order to
understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-
body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the
commonwealth.

Character of the Roman Burgess-Body

Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like the Roman,
which was not the moving spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole
machinery--a sure perception of the common good, a sagacious deference
towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit i