unpremeditated change in its form of government which resulted in the
self-assumed dictatorship of Caesar, and the usurpation of the Empire
by Augustus. The old Rome had had kings. Then the name and the power
became odious--the name to all the citizens, no doubt, but the power
simply to the nobility, who grudged the supremacy of one man. The
kings were abolished, and an oligarchy was established under the name
of a Republic, with its annual magistrates--at first its two Consuls,
then its Praetors and others, and occasionally a Dictator, as some
current event demanded a concentration of temporary power in a single
hand for a certain purpose.

The Republic was no republic, as we understand the word; nor did it
ever become so, though their was always going on a perpetual struggle
to transfer the power from the nobles to the people, in which
something was always being given or pretended to be given to the
outside class. But so little was as yet understood of liberty that, as
each plebeian made his way up into high place and became one of the
magistrates of the State, he became also one of the oligarchical
faction. There was a continued contest, with a certain amount of good
faith on each side, on behalf of the so-called Republic--but still a
contest for power. This became so continued that a foreign war was at
times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of
the State, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each
against the other. It is probably the case that the invasion of
the Gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second Punic war,
threatening as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome,
provided the Republic with that vitality which kept it so long in
existence. Then came Marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the
people, and Sylla, as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars
between them, in which, as one prevailed or the other, Rome was