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The History of Rome, Book IV - The Revolution by Theodor Mommsen
page 91 of 681 (13%)
let the ship drive before the wind: if we understand by internal
government more than the transaction of current business, there was at
this period no government in Rome at all. The single leading thought
of the governing corporation was the maintenance and, if possible, the
increase of their usurped privileges. It was not the state that had
a title to get the right and best man for its supreme magistracy;
but every member of the coterie had an inborn title to the highest
office of the state--a title not to be prejudiced either by the
unfair rivalry of men of his own class or by the encroachments of
the excluded. Accordingly the clique proposed to itself, as its
most important political aim, the restriction of re-election to the
consulship and the exclusion of "new men"; and in fact it succeeded
in obtaining the legal prohibition of the former about 603,(1) and
in sufficing with a government of aristocratic nobodies. Even the
inaction of the government in its outward relations was doubtless
connected with this policy of the nobility, exclusive towards
commoners, and distrustful towards the individual members of their
own order. By no surer means could they keep commoners, whose deeds
were their patent of nobility, aloof from the pure circles of the
aristocracy than by giving no opportunity to any one to perform
deeds at all; to the existing government of general mediocrity
even an aristocratic conqueror of Syria or Egypt would have
proved extremely inconvenient.

Attempts at Reform
Permanent Criminal Commissions
Vote by Ballot
Exclusion of the Senators from the Equestrian Centuries
The Public Elections

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