er the war
with Perseus no further advance had been asked from the community.
They allowed their military system to decay rather than compel the
burgesses to enter the odious transmarine service; how it fared
with the individual magistrates who attempted to carry out the
conscription according to the strict letter of the law, has
already been related.(4)

Optimates and Populares

In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy
and a democracy still undeveloped but already cankered in the bud
were interwoven in a manner pregnant with fatal results. According
to their party names, which were first heard during this period,
the "Optimates" wished to give effect to the will of the best, the
"Populares" to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome
of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining
community. Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered
in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites. Both were equally
affected by political corruption, and both were in fact equally
worthless. Both were necessarily tied down to the status quo, for
neither on the one side nor on the other was there found any political
idea--to say nothing of any political plan--reaching beyond the
existing state of things; and accordingly the two parties were so
entirely in agreement that they met at every step as respected both
means and ends, and a change of party was a change of political
tactics more than of political sentiments. The commonwealth would
beyond doubt have been a gainer, if either the aristocracy had directly
introduced a hereditary rotation instead of election by the burgesses,
or the democracy had produced from within it a real demagogic government.
But these Optimates and these Populares of the beginning of the seventh
century were far too indispensable for eachother to wage such internecine
war; they not only could not destroy each other, but, even if they had
been able to do so, they would not have been willing. Meanwhile the
commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and
was verging towards utter disorganization.

Social Crisis

The crisis with which the Roman revolution was opened arose not out
of this paltry political conflict, but out of the economic and social
relations which the Roman government allowed, like everything else,
simply to take their course, and which thus found opportunity to
bring the morbid matter, that ha