the old structure
was falling to pieces, they were with the most painstaking gravity
watching over every old ornamental scroll and every speck of rust
in the constitution; after all it was simply ridiculous,
when the genteel lords had scruples of conscience as to calling
their deliberative assembly beyond the sacred soil of the city
the senate, and cautiously gave it the title of the "three hundred";(23)
or when they instituted tedious investigations in state law
as to whether and how a curiate law could be legitimately enacted
elsewhere than within the ring-wall of Rome.

The Lukewarm

Far worse traits were the indifference of the lukewarm
and the narrow-minded stubbornness of the ultras. The former
could not be brought to act or even to keep silence. If they were asked
to exert themselves in some definite way for the common good,
with the inconsistency characteristic of weak people they regarded
any such suggestion as a malicious attempt to compromise them
still further, and either did not do what they were ordered at all
or did it with half heart. At the same time of course,
with their affectation of knowing better when it was too late
and their over-wise impracticabilities, they proved a perpetual clog
to those who were acting; their daily work consisted in criticizing,
ridiculing, and bemoaning every occurrence great and small,
and in unnerving and discouraging the multitude by their own
sluggishness and hopelessness.

The Ultras

While these displayed the utter prostration of weakness, the ultras
on the other hand exhibited in full display its exaggerated action.
With them there was no attempt to conceal that the preliminary
to any negotiation for peace was the bringing over of Caesar's head;
every one of the attempts towards peace, which Caesar repeatedly made
even now, was tossed aside without being examined, or employed
only to cover insidious attempts on the lives of the commissioners
of their opponent. That the declared partisans of Caesar
had jointly and severally forfeited life and property, was a matter
of course; but it fared little better with those more or less neutral.
Lucius Domitius, the hero of Corfinium, gravely proposed
in the council of war that those senators who had fought in the army
of Pompeius should come to a vote on all who had either remained neutral
or had emigrated but not entered the army, and should according
to their own pleasure individually acquit them or punish them
by