The plebs, though outside
of the political people proper, as not being included in the
three tribes, when they came to be a power in the republic under
the emperors, and the old distinction of plebs and patricians was
forgotten, were an estate, and not a local or territorial people.
The republican element was in the fact that the land, which gave
the right to participate in political power, was the domain of
the state, and the tenant held it from the state. The domain was
vested in the state, not in the senator nor the prince, and was
therefore respublica, not private property--the first grand leap
of the human race from barbarism. In all other respects the
Roman constitution was no more republican than the feudal.
Athens went farther than Rome, and introduced the principle of
territorial democracy. The division into demes or wards, whence
comes the word democracy, was a real territorial division, not
personal nor genealogical. And if the equality of all men was
not recognized, all who were included in the political class
stood on the same footing. Athens and other Greek cities, though
conquered by Rome, exerted after their conquest a powerful
influence on Roman civilization, which became far more democratic
under the emperors than it had been under the patrician senate,
which the assassins of Julius Caesar, and the superannuated
conservative party they represented, tried so hard to preserve.
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