such as the declaration of war against
Carthage and the assignations of land. The government of the senate
might be bad; the primary assemblies could not govern at all. Not
that an evil-disposed majority predominated in them; on the contrary
the counsel of a man of standing, the loud call of honour, and the
louder call of necessity were still, as a rule, listened to in the
comitia, and averted the most injurious and disgraceful results.
The burgesses, before whom Marcellus pleaded his cause, ignominiously
dismissed his accuser, and elected the accused as consul for the
following year: they suffered themselves also to be persuaded of the
necessity of the war against Philip, terminated the war against
Perseus by the election of Paullus, and accorded to the latter his
well-deserved triumph. But in order to such elections and such
decrees there was needed some special stimulus; in general the mass
having no will of its own followed the first impulse, and folly or
accident dictated the decision.

Disorganisation of Government

In the state, as in every organism, an organ which no longer
discharges its functions is injurious. The nullity of the sovereign
assembly of the people involved no small danger. Any minority in the
senate might constitutionally appeal to the comitia against the
majority. To every individual, who possessed the easy art of
addressing untutored ears or of merely throwing away money, a path was
opened up for his acquiring a position or procuring a decree in his
favour, to which the magistrates and the government were formally
bound to do homage. Hence sprang those citizen-generals, accustomed
to sketch plans of battle on the tables of taverns and to look down on
the regular service with compassion by virtue of their inborn genius
for strategy: hence those staff-officers, who owed their command to
the canvassing intrigues of the capital and, whenever matters looked
serious, had at once to get leave of absence -en masse-; and hence
the battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae, and the disgraceful
management of the war with Perseus. At every step the government
was thwarted and led astray by those incalculable decrees of the
burgesses, and as was to be expected, most of all in the very
cases where it was most in the right.

But the weakening of the government and the weakening of the community
itself were among the lesser dangers that sprang from this demagogism.
Still more directly the factiou