Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/396

 390 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. faithful to them. Rome would renounce its future giandeur, but the patricians would be masters there. They would no longer have these plebeians to trouble them, to whom the rules of ordinary government could not be applied, and who were an embarrassment to the city. They ought, ])eih!ips, to have been driven out at the same time with the kings; but since they had of themselves taken the resolution to depart, the par tricians ought to let them go, and rejoice at their de- parture. But others, loss faithful to old principles, or solici- tous for the grandeur of Rome, were afflicted at the departure of the plebs. Rome would lose half its sol- diers. What would become of it in the midst of the Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans — all enemies? The plebs had good qualities; why could not these be made use of for the interests of the city? These senators desired, therefore, at a cost of a few concessions, of which they did not perhaps see all the consequences, to bring back to the city those thousands of arms that made the htrenglh of the legions. On the other side, the plebs perceived, at the end of a few months, that they could not live upon the Sacred Mount. They procured, indeed, what was materially necessary for existence, but all that went to make up an organized society was wanting. They could not found a city there, because they could not find a priest who knew how to perform the religious ceremony of the foundation. They could not elect magistrates, for they had no prytaneum with its perpetual fire, where the magistrate might sacrifice. They could find no foundation for social laws, since the only laws of which men then had any idea were derived from the patrician religion. In a word, they had not among them the ele-