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served their purpose. It is true there were noble exceptions, but the rankness of the times was frankly admitted and attempts to check the progress of corruption by censorial power and law were practically all in vain. Thus was Rome sapped by the very wealth added by her conquests, and the empire weakened by the abuse of her extended power. It could be said that the misery of her subject states was greater in time of peace under the corrupt rule of Roman governors than it had been under the ordinary misfortunes of war.

PART IV

FALL OF THE REPUBLIC AND ESTABLISH

ING OF THE MONARCHY. 78-44 B.C.

Chapter XXVI

THE RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION. 78-70 B.C.

S

ULLA'S arrangements had been acquiesced in by all the chief classes in the state, and on his death his constitution had nothing to fear from any organized body of opponents. There was, however, a large but heterogeneous body of malcontents opposed to the present condition of things for varied reasons.

This opposition was made up of widely different classes. There were the jurists, who considered the Sullan laws unconstitutional, and the moderate senators, who desired to compromise with the democratic party; there were the democrats themselves, who aimed at the restoration of the tribunate, and the disfranchised, who wished to recover or obtain political influence; there were the poor, who had been deprived of their free corn, and the proscribed, who demanded back their confiscated property; and there were the equestrian capitalists, whose chances for gain had been curtailed by the restoration of senatorial privileges. To all these classes one more remains to be added-the men of ambition and the men of ruined fortunes. The latter included alike the aristocratic lords, who had lost their patrimony by riotous living, and the Sullan colonists, who refused to settle down to a life of husbandry and were eager for fresh spoil. The former included men, outside the senatorial circle, who were eager to force their way into office by popular favor; and men of more daring ambition, who might perhaps emulate Gaius Gracchus.

It is most necessary, for the understanding of the history of the following years, that all these elements of opposition should be fully grasped; and it may be well here to recall to mind the two great and constant difficulties of the Roman government-the difficulty of controlling its military governors in the provinces; and the difficulty of managing the masses of slaves and freedmen in the capital, without either police or troops at its disposal.

It was, perhaps, the greatest misfortune of all that there was everywhere at this period a dearth of political leaders. The man

106-78 B.C.

agement of parties was in the hands of political clubs, a system which had existed for centuries at Rome, but which was now seen in its worst and most aggravated form. These clubs, as common among the rabble as among the aristocrats, controlled the whole political life of the city through organized bribery and intimidation. Such a system of faction and corruption, however, was not one likely to produce statesmen, however much it might add to the bitterness and violence of personal and political struggles.

Among the men prominent in the political life of the day, three alone are worthy of consideration. The first is Gnaeus Pompeius, born in 106 B.C. He had raised troops and fought for Sulla in the second civil war, and had enjoyed the titles of imperator and triumphator before his age permitted him to stand for any office. Already he began to be known by the title of Magnus. He was an able soldier, but no genius; cautious to timidity, and averse to strike till he had established an immense superiority over his opponent. In culture, as well as in integrity of character, he was at least up to the level of the time; he was a good neighbor, a good husband and father. His temperament was kind and humane; and he was the first to depart from the custom of putting to death captive kings and generals after a triumph. Yet he sent a divorce to the wife whom he loved, at the command of Sulla, because she belonged to an outlawed family. For politics he had little aptitude. He was awkward and stiff in public; easily managed by his freedmen and clients; eager for power, but affecting to despise it. His relations to the parties of the time were peculiar. Though a Sullan officer, he was opposed to Sulla personally. Nor was he in sympathy with the senatorial government; for his family was not yet fully established among the aristocracy, and Pompeius himself had once been a Cinnan adherent. He had no political sagacity, and little political courage. He might have had a definite and respectable position had he contented himself with being the general of the senatethe office for which he was from the beginning destined. With this he was not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing to be something else than he could be. He was constantly aspiring to a special position in the state, and when it offered itself, he could not make up his mind to occupy it. Constantly tormented by an ambition which was frightened at its own aims, his deeply agitated life passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.

Marcus Crassus was famed for his boundless activity, especially

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