ry
candidate should in his "going round" (-ambitus-) salute every
individual voter by name and press his hand. The world of quality
readily entered into this degrading canvass. The true candidate
cringed not only in the palace, but also on the street, and
recommended himself to the multitude by flattering attentions,
indulgences, and civilities more or less refined. Demagogism and
the cry for reforms were sedulously employed to attract the notice and
favour of the public; and they were the more effective, the more they
attacked not things but persons. It became the custom for beardless
youths of genteel birth to introduce themselves with -eclat- into
public life by playing afresh the part of Cato with the immature
passion of their boyish eloquence, and by constituting and proclaiming
themselves state-attorneys, if possible, against some man of very
high standing and very great unpopularity; the Romans suffered the
grave institutions of criminal justice and of political police to
become a means of soliciting office. The provision or, what was
still worse, the promise of magnificent popular amusements had long
been the, as it were legal, prerequisite to the obtaining of the
consulship;(3) now the votes of the electors began to be directly
purchased with money, as is shown by the prohibition issued against
this about 595. Perhaps the worst consequence of the continual
courting of the favour of the multitude by the ruling aristocracy
was the incompatibility of such a begging and fawning part with
the position which the government should rightfully occupy in
relation to the governed. The government was thus converted from
a blessing into a curse for the people. They no longer ventured to
dispose of the property and blood of the burgesses, as exigency required,
for the good of their country. They allowed the burgesses to become
habituated to the dangerous idea that they were legally exempt from
the payment of direct taxes even by way of advance--after the war
with Perseus no further advance had been asked from the community.
They allowed their military system to decay rather than compel the
burgesses to enter the odious transmarine service; how it fared
with the individual magistrates who attempted to carry out the
conscription according to the strict letter of the law, has
already been related.(4)

Optimates and Populares

In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy
and a democracy still un