and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps,
which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in 665(1)
as merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded
a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also
the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially
dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could
not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their
earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position
stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious
silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment
and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital,
which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise
discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among
the burgess-bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations--whether
they like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed
by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter,
and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arretines
and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory,
but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them
by the Roman people; or, as was the case in Etruria especially,
were reduced to be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers
in the woods. Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family
connections and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost
their lives in consequence of the restoration, or who were wandering
along the Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning at the court
and in the army of Mithradates, in all the misery of emigrant exile;
for, according to the strict family-associations that governed
the political feeling of this age, it was accounted a point of honour(2)
that those who were left behind should endeavour to procure for exiled
relatives the privilege of returning to their native land, and,