of national and manly honour was already lost among the Romans,
was shown with epigrammatic point by the statue of the stripped
and bound Mancinus, which he himself, proud of his patriotic
devotedness, caused to be erected in Rome. Wherever we turn our
eyes, we find the internal energy as well as the external power
of Rome rapidly on the decline. The ground won in gigantic struggles
is not extended, norin fact even maintained, in this period of peace.
The government of the world, which it was difficult to achieve, it
was still more difficult to preserve; the Roman senate had mastered
the former task, but it broke down under the latter.

Chapter II

The Reform Movement and Tiberius Gracchus

The Roman Government before the Period of the Gracchi

For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the Roman state
enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there
on the surface. Its dominion extended over the three continents;
the lustre of the Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were
constantly on the increase; all eyes rested on Italy, all talents and
all riches flowed thither; it seemed as if a golden age of peaceful
prosperity and intellectual enjoyment of life could not but there
begin. The Orientals of this period told each other with astonishment
of the mighty republic of the west, "which subdued kingdoms far and
near, and whoever heard its name trembled; but it kept good faith
with its friends and clients. Such was the glory of the Romans, and
yet no one usurped the crown and no one paraded in purple dress; but
they obeyed whomsoever from year to year they made their master, and
there was among them neither envy nor discord."

Spread of Decay

So it seemed at a distance; matters wore a different aspect on a
closer view. The government of the aristocracy was in full train
to destroy its own work. Not that the sons and grandsons of the
vanquished at Cannae and of the victors at Zama had so utterly
degenerated from their fathers and grandfathers; the difference was
not so much in the men who now sat in the senate, as in the times.
Where a limited number of old families of established wealth and
hereditary political importance conducts the government, it will
display in seasons of danger an incomparable tenacity of purpose and
power of heroic self-sacrifice, just as in seasons of tranquillity
it will be shortsighted, selfish, and negligent--the germs of both
results are esse