These changes are very great, but are none
of them radical, dating from the recognition of the plebs as
pertaining to the Roman people. They are normal developments,
not corruptions, and the transition from the consular republic to
the imperial was unquestionably a real social and political
progress. And yet the Roman people, had they chosen, could have
given a different direction to the developments of their
constitution. There was Providence in the course of events, but
no fatalism.
Sulla was a true patrician, a blind partisan of the past. He
sought to arrest the plebeian development led by Marius, and to
restore the exclusively patrician government. But it was too late.
His proscriptions, confiscations, butcheries, unheard-of cruelties
which anticipated and surpassed those of the French Revolution of
1793, availed nothing. The Marian or plebeian movement,
apparently checked for a moment, resumed its march with renewed
vigor under Julius, and triumphed at Pharsalia. In vain Cicero,
only accidentally associated with the patrician party, which
distrusted him--in vain Cicero declaims, Cato scolds, or parades
his impractical virtues, Brutus and Cassius seize the assassin's
dagger, and strike to the earth "the foremost man of all the
world;" the plebeian cause moves on with resistless force,
triumphs anew at Philippi, and young Octavius avenges the murder
of his uncle, and proves to the world that the assassination of a
ruler is a blunder as well as a crime.
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