ur were accorded
and carried out, without the senate being asked about them.
Obviously this did not arise from a mere neglect of forms, which would
be the less intelligible, seeing that in the great majority of cases
no opposition from the senate was to be expected. On the contrary,
it was a well-calculated design to dislodge the senate from the domain
of military arrangements and of higher politics, and to restrict
its share of administration to financial questions and internal
affairs; and even opponents plainly discerned this and protested,
so far as they could, against this conduct of the regents by means
of senatorial decrees and criminal actions. While the regents
thus in the main set aside the senate, they still made some use
of the less dangerous popular assemblies--care was taken that in these
the lords of the street should put no farther difficulty in the way
of the lords of the state; in many cases however they dispensed
even with this empty shadow, and employed without disguise
autocratic forms.

The Senate under the Monarchy
Cicero and the Majority

The humbled senate had to submit to its position
whether it would or not. The leader of the compliant majority
continued to be Marcus Cicero. He was useful on account
of his lawyer's talent of finding reasons, or at any rate words,
for everything; and there was a genuine Caesarian irony
in employing the man, by means of whom mainly the aristocracy
had conducted their demonstrations against the regents,
as the mouthpiece of servility. Accordingly they pardoned him
for his brief desire to kick against the pricks, not however
without having previously assured themselves of his submissiveness
in every way. His brother had been obliged to take the position
of an officer in the Gallic army to answer in some measure
as a hostage for him; Pompeius had compelled Cicero himself
to accept a lieutenant-generalship under him, which furnished
a handle for politely banishing him at any moment. Clodius
had doubtless been instructed to leave him meanwhile at peace,
but Caesar as little threw off Clodius on account of Cicero
as he threw off Cicero on account of Clodius; and the great saviour
of his country and the no less great hero of liberty entered
into an antechamber-rivalry in the headquarters of Samarobriva,
for the befitting illustration of which there lacked, unfortunately,
a Roman Aristophanes. But not only was the same rod kept in suspense
over Cicero's he