the extraordinary double difficulty
of keeping the military chiefs in the provinces in subjection
to the supreme civil magistracy, and of dealing with the masses
of the Italian and extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital,
and of the slaves living there to a great extent in de facto freedom,
without having troops at disposal. The senate was placed
as it were, in a fortress exposed and threatened on all sides,
and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue. But the means
of resistance organized by Sulla were considerable and lasting;
and although the majority of the nation was manifestly disinclined
to the government which Sulla had installed, and even animated
by hostile feelings towards it, that government might very well
maintain itself for a long time in its stronghold against
the distracted and confused mass of an opposition which was not agreed
either as to end or means, and, having no head, was broken up
into a hundred fragments. Only it was necessary that it should
be determined to maintain its position, and should bring
at least a spark of that energy, which had built the fortress,
to its defence; for in the case of a garrison which will not
defend itself, the greatest master of fortification constructs
his walls and moats in vain.

Want of Leaders
Coterie-Systems

The more everything ultimately depended on the personality
of the leading men on both sides, it was the more unfortunate
that both, strictly speaking, lacked leaders. The politics of
thisperiod were thoroughly under the sway of the coterie-system
in its worst form. This, indeed, was nothing new; close unions
of families and clubs were inseparable from an aristocratic
organizationof the state, and had for centuries prevailed in Rome.
But it was not till this epoch that they became all-powerful,
for it was only now (first in 690) that their influence was attested
rather than checked by legal measures of repression.

All persons of quality, those of popular leanings no less than
the oligarchy proper, met in Hetaeriae; the mass of the burgesses
likewise, so far as they took any regular part in political events
at all, formed according to their voting-districts close unions
with an almost military organization, which found their natural
captains and agents in the presidents of the districts, "tribe-
distributors" (-divisores tribuum-). With these political clubs
everything was bought and sold; the vote of the elector especially,
but a