influence with the Roman citizens and charged with maintaining their
interests. Such was the system adopted by Rome. It would have been easy for
a person in the compass of a few miles to find villages having the _jus
Latii_, others with simply the _jus Italicum_, colonies, prefectures,
municipia _cum_ et _sine suffragio_. The object of the Romans was evident.
They planned to govern. Cities alike in interests and patriotic motives
were separated by this diversity of rights and the jealousies and hatreds
which resulted from it. Concord, which was necessary to any united and
general insurrection, was rendered impossible between towns, some of which
were objects of envy, others, of pity. Their condition, moreover, was
such that all, even the most fortunate, had something to gain by showing
themselves faithful; and all, even the most wretched, had something to
fear if they did not prove tractable. These Italians, with all the varied
privileges and burdens enumerated above, far outnumbered the Roman
citizens.[36] A comparison of the numbers of the census of 115 and that of
70 shows that the numbers of Italians and Romans were[37] as three to two.
All these Italians aspired to Roman citizenship, to enjoy the right to vote
to which some of their number had been admitted, and the struggle which
was sometime to end in their complete emancipation had already commenced.
During the first centuries of Roman history, Rome was divided into two
classes, patricians and plebeians. The plebeians by heroic efforts had
broken down the barriers that separated them from the patricians. The
privilege of intermarriage, the possibility of obtaining the highest
offices of the state, the substitution of the _comitia tributa_ for the
other two assemblies, had not made of Rome "an unbridled democracy," but
all these benefits obtained by tribunician agitation, all the far-reaching
advances gained by force of laws and not of arms, had constituted at Rome a
single people and created a true Roman nation. There were now at Rome only
rich and poor, nobles and proletariat. With intelligence and ability a
plebeian could aspire to the magistracies and thence to the senate. Why