Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/504

 498 MUNICIPAL REGIME DISAPPEAKS. BOOK V. increase in importance, and became the master of the state. The rich alone filled the magistracies, because these cost a great sum to purchase. They alone com- posed the senate, because it required a very large prop- erty to be a senator. Thus we see this strange fact, that, in spite of democratic laws, a nobility was formed, and that the people, who were all-powerful, suffered this, nobility to take rank above them, and never made any real opijosition to it. Rome, therefore, from the third to the second cen- tury before our era, was the most aristocratically gov- erned city that existed in Italy or Greece. Finally, let us remark that, if the senate was obliged to manage the multitude on home questions, it was absolute master so far as concerned foreign affairs. It was the senate that received ambassadors, that concluded alliances^ that distributed the provinces and the legions, that ratified the acts of the generals, that determined the- conditions allowed to the conquered — all acts which everywhere else belonged to the popular assembly^ Foreigners, in their relations with Home, had, there- fore, nothing to do with the people. The senate alone spoke, and the idea was held out that the people had no power. This was the opinion which a Greek expressed to Flaminius. " In your country," said he, " riches alone govern, and all else is submissive to it." ' As a result of this, in all the cities the aristocracy turned their eyes towards Rome, counted upon it, looked to it for protection, and followed its fortunes. This seemed so much the more natural, as Rome was a foreign city to nobody ; Sabines, Latins, and Etrus- cans saw in it a Sabine, Latin, or Etruscan city, and the Greeks recognized Greeks in it. • Livy, XXXIV. 31.