up, sometimes in enlarging them; but we
nowhere perceive any trace of preparations for thoroughly rebuilding
or renewing it, and the question is no longer whether, but simply
when, the structure will fall. During no epoch did the Roman
constitution remain formally so stable as in the period from the
Sicilian to the third Macedonian war and for a generation beyond it;
but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a
sign of the health of the state, but a token of incipient sickness and
the harbinger of revolution.

Notes for Chapter XI

1. II. III. New Aristocracy

2. II. III. New Opposition

3. II. III. Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

4. All these insignia probably belonged on their first emergence only
to the nobility proper, i. e. to the agnate descendants of curule
magistrates; although, after the manner of such decorations, all of
them in course of time were extended to a wider circle. This can be
distinctly proved in the case of the gold finger-ring, which in the
fifth century was worn only by the nobility (Plin. H. N., xxxiii. i.
18), in the sixth by every senator and senator's son (Liv. xxvi. 36),
in the seventh by every one of equestrian rank, under the empire by
every one who was of free birth. So also with the silver trappings,
which still, in the second Punic war, formed a badge of the nobility
alone (Liv. xxvi. 37); and with the purple border of the boys' toga,
which at first was granted only to the sons of curule magistrates,
then to the sons of equites, afterwards to those of all free-born
persons, lastly--yet as early as the time of the second Punic war
--even to the sons of freedmen (Macrob. Sat. i. 6). The golden
amulet-case (-bulla-) was a badge of the children of senators in the
time of the second Punic war (Macrob. l. c.; Liv. xxvi. 36), in that
of Cicero as the badge of the children of the equestrian order (Cic.
Verr. i. 58, 152), whereas children of inferior rank wore the leathern
amulet (-lorum-). The purple stripe (-clavus-) on the tunic was a
badge of the senators (I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate) and of the
equites, so that at least in later times the former wore it broad, the
latter narrow; with the nobility the -clavus- had nothing to do.

5. II. III. Civic Equality

6. Plin. H. N. xxi. 3, 6. The right to appear crowned in public was
acquired by distinction in war (Polyb. vi. 39, 9; Liv. x. 47);
consequently, the wearing a crown without warr