inct.

Abolition of the Life-Presidency of the Community

As the Servian reform, which placed the --metoikos-- on a footing of
equality in a military point of view with the burgess, appears to have
originated from considerations of an administrative nature rather than
from any political party-tendency, we may assume that the first of the
movements which led to internal crises and changes of the constitution
was that which sought to limit the magistracy. The earliest
achievement of this, the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted
in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the
community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy. How
necessarily this was the result of the natural development of things,
is most strikingly demonstrated by the fact, that the same change of
constitution took place in an analogous manner through the whole
circuit of the Italo-Grecian world. Not only in Rome, but likewise
among the other Latins as well as among the Sabellians, Etruscans,
and Apulians--and generally, in all the Italian communities, just as
in those of Greece--we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch
superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In the case of the
Lucanian canton there is evidence that it had a democratic government
in time of peace, and it was only in the event of war that the
magistrates appointed a king, that is, an official similar to the
Roman dictator. The Sabellian civic communities, such as those of
Capua and Pompeii, in like manner were in later times governed by
a "community-manager" (-medix tuticus-) changed from year to year,
and we may assume that similar institutions existed among the other
national and civic communities of Italy. In this light the reasons
which led to the substitution of consuls for kings in Rome need no
explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity
developed of itself by a sort of natural necessity the limitation of
the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual,
term. Simple, however, as was the cause of this change, it might be
brought about in various ways; a resolution might be adopted on the
death of one life-ruler not to elect another--a course which the
Roman senate is said to have attempted after the death of Romulus;
or the ruler might voluntarily abdicate, as is alleged to have been
the intention of king Servius Tullius; or the people might rise in
rebellion against a tyrannical ruler,