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 CHAPTER IX

THE REVOLUTION AND THE TRANSITION TO THE PRINCIPATE

The party of reform which, during the last century of the Republic, gave a new development to the elastic Roman constitution, by gradually creating a stronger executive organ than had been known since the time of the monarchy, had two distinguishing features. One was an opposition, sometimes rational, sometimes blind, to the senatorial government; the other the exposition of a positive programme for remedying evils which all but the most callous or careless could see. The nature of their attack varied with the assailable features presented by its object. At first it was directed against the assumed indifference of the Senate to internal reform and its failure to suggest hasty remedies for economic grievances. This was the essential feature of the Gracchan movement; but, although its example was perilous, the immediate effects of this first revolution were transitory in the extreme. The Senate emerged from the attack shaken but victorious. Italy was but of little account when the world lay at the feet of the noble families who composed the great council of state, and the Senate could be made to appear the only true government for an empire. Unfortunately this theory was rudely shaken. A miserable war in a protected state, into which the government was most unwillingly dragged, was thought sufficient to show that the merits of the senatorial administration of the empire were an illusion. The epoch of the Jugurthine war is the turning-point of the history of this period. A reforming party with an imperial policy must associate itself with the military power. The change was rapidly effected. Tribunes, commons, assemblies still represent the nominal sovereigns, but their weapons—too powerful for the users—are the imperator, the