Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/62

44 and temptations as those with which Sulla had surrounded the ruling families of Rome. He had carefully stopped all the channels through which public opinion could legitimately find utterance, and had freed the Nobles from all responsibility except to their own order. The fear of equestrian juries and of tribunician license had at least brought it home to the governing class that they were not the whole State. Now there was nothing to disturb their repose. Sulla's constitution staked all on the hope that within this ring of families there should be a constant succession of vigorous administrators and able officers capable of guiding the State in peace and war. But the system was little calculated to produce the men required to work it. The Roman Noble was encouraged to spend his youth in luxury and extravagance. If he were easy-going and careless, he sank into the class of elegant triflers of whom Cicero says—"they are so stupid that they seem to think that though the Commonwealth may go to ruin, their fish-ponds will be safe." If he had ambition, then the wilder his expenditure on shows and largesses, the more surely he might look forward to his election as prætor and as consul. Here was the opportunity to restore his shattered fortune. The world was divided into provinces, each of which was destined to be prey of one member after another of the official caste at Rome. The short period of eleven years between the dictatorship of Sulla and the first consulship of Pompey has for its typical administrators the three men whose names Juvenal selects out of all past history when he wishes to