d Pompey, the distemper broke out
afresh; for Caesar heading the Marian party, and Pompey, that of Sylla,
and war ensuing, the victory remained with Caesar, who was the first
tyrant in Rome; after whose time that city was never again free. Such,
therefore, was the beginning and such the end of the Agrarian Law.

But since it has elsewhere been said that the struggle between the
commons and senate of Rome preserved her liberties, as giving rise to
laws favourable to freedom, it might seem that the consequences of the
Agrarian Law are opposed to that view. I am not, however, led to alter
my opinion on this account; for I maintain that the ambition of the
great is so pernicious that unless controlled and counteracted in a
variety of ways, it will always reduce a city to speedy ruin. So that if
the controversy over the Agrarian Laws took three hundred years to
bring Rome to slavery, she would in all likelihood have been brought to
slavery in a far shorter time, had not the commons, by means of this
law, and by other demands, constantly restrained the ambition of the
nobles.

We may also learn from this contest how much more men value wealth than
honours; for in the matter of honours, the Roman nobles always gave way
to the commons without any extraordinary resistance; but when it came to
be a question of property, so stubborn were they in its defence, that
the commons to effect their ends had to resort to those irregular
methods which have been described above. Of which irregularities the
prime movers were the Gracchi, whose motives are more to be commended
than their measures; since to pass a law with stringent retrospective
effect, in order to remove an abuse of long standing in a republic, is
an unwise step, and one which, as I have already shown at length, can
have no other result than to accelerate the mischief to which the abuse
leads; whereas, if you temporize, either the abuse develops more slowly,
or else, in course of time, and before it comes to a head, dies out of
itself.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.--_That weak Republics are irresolute and undecided; and
that the course they may take depends more on Necessity than Choice._

A terrible pestilence breaking out in Rome seemed to the Equians and
Volscians to offer a fit opportunity for crushing her. The two nations,
therefore, assembling a great army, attacked the Latins and Hernicians
and laid waste their country. Whereupon the Latins and Hernicians were
forced to ma