advanced
only under compulsion of almost unavoidable necessity, and the same
questions recurred often, before they were settled. The constitutional
history of the Republic turns on the endeavours of the aristocracy, who
claimed to be the only true Romans, to retain in their hands the power
they had wrested from the kings, and of the plebeians to get an equal
share in it. And this controversy, which the eager and restless
Athenians went through in one generation, lasted for more than two
centuries, from a time when the _plebs_ were excluded from the
government of the city, and were taxed, and made to serve without pay,
until, in the year 286, they were admitted to political equality. Then
followed one hundred and fifty years of unexampled prosperity and glory;
and then, out of the original conflict which had been compromised, if
not theoretically settled, a new struggle arose which was without an
issue.

The mass of poorer families, impoverished by incessant service in war,
were reduced to dependence on an aristocracy of about two thousand
wealthy men, who divided among themselves the immense domain of the
State. When the need became intense the Gracchi tried to relieve it by
inducing the richer classes to allot some share in the public lands to
the common people. The old and famous aristocracy of birth and rank had
made a stubborn resistance, but it knew the art of yielding. The later
and more selfish aristocracy was unable to learn it. The character of
the people was changed by the sterner motives of dispute. The fight for
political power had been carried on with the moderation which is so
honourable a quality of party contests in England. But the struggle for
the objects of material existence grew to be as ferocious as civil
controversies in France. Repulsed by the rich, after a struggle of
twenty-two years, the people, three hundred and twenty thousand of whom
depended on public rations for food, were ready to follow any man who
promised to obtain for them by revolution what they could not obtain by
law.

For a time the Senate, representing the ancient and threatened order of
things, was strong enough to overcome every popular leader that arose,
until Julius Caesar, supported by an army which he had led in an
unparalleled career of conquest, and by the famished masses which he won
by his lavish liberality, and skilled beyond all other men in the art of
governing, converted the Republic into a Monarchy by a series