ent was willing
or able to give was derived by the middle classes from the political
successes of the Roman community and the gradual consolidation of the
Roman sovereignty over Italy. The numerous and large colonies which
it was necessary to found for the securing of that sovereignty, the
greater part of which were sent forth in the fifth century, furnished
a portion of the agricultural proletariate with farms of their own,
while the efflux gave relief to such as remained at home. The
increase of the indirect and extraordinary sources of revenue, and
the flourishing condition of the Roman finances in general, rendered
it but seldom necessary to levy any contribution from the farmers in
the form of a forced loan. While the earlier small holdings were
probably lost beyond recovery, the rising average of Roman prosperity
must have converted the former larger landholders into farmers, and
in so far added new members to the middle class. People of rank
sought principally to secure the large newly-acquired districts for
occupation; the mass of wealth which flowed to Rome through war and
commerce must have reduced the rate of interest; the increase in the
population of the capital benefited the farmer throughout Latium;
a wise system of incorporation united a number of neighbouring and
formerly subject communities with the Roman state, and thereby
strengthened especially the middle class; finally, the glorious
victories and their mighty results silenced faction. If the distress
of the farmers was by no means removed and still less were its sources
stopped, it yet admits of no doubt that at the close of this period
the Roman middle class was on the whole in a far less oppressed
condition than in the first century after the expulsion of the kings.

Civic Equality

Lastly civic equality was in a certain sense undoubtedly attained
or rather restored by the reform of 387, and the development of its
legitimate consequences. As formerly, when the patricians still in
fact formed the burgesses, these had stood upon a footing of absolute
equality in rights and duties, so now in the enlarged burgess-body
there existed in the eye of the law no arbitrary distinctions.
The gradations to which differences of age, sagacity, cultivation, and
wealth necessarily give rise in civil society, naturally also pervaded
the sphere of public life; but the spirit animating the burgesses and
the policy of the government uniformly operated so as t