Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/63

71 B.C.] gibbet the most shameless and notorious plunderers of the provinces—Dolabella, Antonius, and Verres. We must turn again to Cicero for a summing up of the condition of the subjects of Rome under this dreadful yoke. "All the provinces are mourning, all the free states are complaining, every principality utters its protest against our greed and our insolence; within the bounds set by the Ocean there is no spot so distant or so retired that the lewdness and evil dealing of our nation have not found the way thither. The tribes of the earth overpower the Roman People beyond its endurance, not with force, not with arms, not with war, but with their sorrow, their tears, their lamentation."

One more cause of demoralisation must not be forgotten. The Roman oligarchy owed its present position to the sword of Sulla, and had founded its domination on the slaughter and robbery of all its principal opponents. Such a past is enough to sap the rigour of any body of politicians; it leads them to look to mere brute force to clear a way for them out of their perplexities; it seems to absolve them from the necessity for wisdom and prescience and statesman-like capacity, and teaches them to evade the task of finding a solution for political problems.

Rome still possessed in her ruling order some men of respectable ability, who in easy and quiet times might perhaps have conducted the business of the State creditably, though they were unequal to deal with the tremendous issues of their own day. Such