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REPUBLIC] however, the ennobled plebeian families drew together, and combined with the older patrician gentes to form a distinct order. Office brought wealth and prestige, and both wealth and prestige were liberally employed in securing for this select circle a monopoly of political power, and excluding new men. Already by the close of the period it was rare for any one but a noble to find his way into high office or into the senate. The senate and magistrates are the mouthpieces of this order, and identified with it in policy and interest. Lastly, it must be allowed that both the senate and the nobility had to some extent justified their power by the use they made of it. It was their tenacity of purpose and devoted patriotism which had carried Rome through the dark days of the Hannibalic War. The heroes of the struggle with Carthage belonged to the leading families; the disasters at the Trasimene Lake and at Cannae were associated with the blunders of popular favourites.

From the first, however, there was an inherent weakness in this senatorial government. It had no sound constitutional

basis, and with the removal of its accidental supports it fell to the ground. Legally the senate had no positive authority. It could merely advise the magistrate when asked to do so, and its decrees were strictly only suggestions to the magistrate, which he was at liberty to accept or reject as he chose. It had, it is true, become customary for the magistrate not only to ask the senate's advice on all important points, but to follow it when given. But it was obvious that if this custom were weakened, and the magistrates chose to act independently, the senate was powerless. It might indeed anathematize the refractory official, or hamper him if it could by setting in motion against him a colleague or the tribunes, but it could do no more, and these measures failed just where the senate's control was most needed and most difficult to maintain—in its relations with the generals and governors of provinces abroad. The virtual

independence of the proconsul was before 146 already exciting the jealousy of the senate and endangering its supremacy. Nor again had the senate any legal hold over the assembly. Except in certain specified cases, it rested with the magistrate to decide whether any question should be settled by a decree of the senate or a vote of the assembly. If he decided to make a proposal to the assembly, he was not bound except by custom to obtain the previous approval of the senate, and the constitution set no limits to the power of the assembly to decide any question whatsoever that was laid before it.

From 167, at least, onwards, there were increasing indications that both the acquiescence of the people in senatorial government and the loyalty of the magistrates to the senate were failing. The absorbing excitement of the great wars had died away; the economic and social disturbance and distress which they produced were creating a growing feeling of discontent; and at the same time the senate provoked inquiries into its title to govern by its failure any longer to govern well. In the East there was confusion; in the West a single native chieftain defied the power which had crushed Carthage. At

home the senate was becoming more and more simply an organ of the nobility, and the nobility were becoming every year more exclusive, more selfish, and less capable and unanimous. But if the senate was not to govern, the difficulty arose of finding an efficient substitute, and it was this difficulty that mainly determined the issue of the struggles which convulsed Rome from

133 to 49. As the event showed, neither the assembly nor the numerous and disorganized magistracy was equal to the work; the magistrates were gradually pushed aside in favour of a more centralized authority, and the former became only the means by which this new authority was first encouraged in opposition to the senate and finally established in a position of impregnable strength. The assembly which made Pompey and Caesar found out too late that it could not unmake them.

It is possible that these constitutional and administrative

difficulties would not have proved so rapidly fatal to the Republic had not its very foundations been sapped by the changes which followed more or less directly on the conquests of the 3rd and 2nd centuries For the opening of the world to Rome, and of Rome to the world, produced a radical change in the structure of Roman society. The subjugation of the Mediterranean countries, by placing at the disposal of Rome the vast natural resources of the West and the accumulated treasures of the East, caused a rapid rise in the standard of wealth and a marked change in its distribution. The Roman state was enabled to dispense with the direct taxation of its citizens, since it derived all the revenue which it needed from the subject countries. But the wealth drawn from the provinces by the state was trifling in amount compared with that which flowed into the pockets of individual citizens. Not only was the booty taken in war largely appropriated by the Roman commanders and their men, but a host of money-makers settled upon the conquered provinces and exploited them for their profit. The nobles engaged in the task of administration, the contractors (publicani) who farmed the revenues, and the “men of business” (negotiatores) who, as money-lenders, merchants or speculators, penetrated to every corner of the Empire, reaped a rich harvest at the expense of the provincials. Farming in Italy on the old lines became increasingly laborious and unprofitable owing to the importation of foreign corn and foreign slaves, and capitalists sought easier methods of acquiring wealth. If this had meant that capital was expended in developing the natural resources of the provinces, the result would have been to increase the prosperity of the countries subject to Rome; but it was not so. The Roman negotiatores, who were often merely the agents of the great families of Rome, drained the accumulated wealth of the provinces by lending money to the subject communities at exorbitant rates of interest. Cicero, for example, found when governor of Cilicia that M. Junius Brutus had lent a large sum to the people of Salamis in Cyprus at 48% compound interest; and we cannot suppose that this was an exceptional case. Such practices as these, together with the wasteful and oppressive system of tax-farming, and the deliberate extortions carried on by senatorial governors, reduced the flourishing cities of the Greek East, within the space of two generations, to utter economic exhaustion.

But the reaction of the same process on Rome herself had far more important consequences. The whole structure of Roman

society was altered, and the equality and homogeneity which had once been its chief characteristics were destroyed. The Roman nobles had not merely ceased, as in old days, to till their own farms; they had found a means of enriching themselves beyond the dreams of avarice,