introduced a new regime. His dictatorship was the consummation of the
victories of the people over nobles as signally as the submission of all
classes to fortunate and unscrupulous generals. We err, however, in
supposing that the Republic was ever a democracy, as we understand the
term, or as it was understood in Athens. Power was always in the hands
of senators, nobles, and rich men, as it still is in England, and was in
Venice. Popular liberty was a name, and democratic institutions were
feeble and shackled. The citizen-noble was free, not the proletarian.
The latter had the redress of laws, but only such as the former gave.
How exclusive must have been an aristocracy when the Claudian family
boasted that, for five hundred years, it had never received any one into
it by adoption, and when the Emperor Nero was the first who received its
privileges! It is with the senatorial families, who contrived to retain
all the great offices of the state, that everything interesting in the
history of Republican Rome is identified,--whether political quarrels,
or private feuds, or legislation, or the control of armies, or the
improvements of the city, or the government of provinces. It was they,
as senators, governors, consuls, generals, quaestors, who gave the people
baths, theatres, and temples. They headed factions as well as armies.
They were the state.

The main object to which the reigning classes gave their attention was
war,--the extension of the empire. "_Ubi castra, ibi respublica_."
Republican Rome was a camp, controlled by aristocratic generals.
Dominion and conquest were their great ideas, their aim, their ambition.
To these were sacrificed pleasure, gain, ease, luxury, learning, and
art. And when they had conquered they sought to rule, and they knew how
to rule. Aside from conquest and government there is nothing peculiarly
impressive in Roman history, except the struggles of political leaders
and the war of classes.