Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/130

106 State. The Roman aristocracy consisted of farmers on a large scale, who probably spent much of their time in the country; thus, unlike the Athenian nobility, they may have failed to act as a timely obstacle to the free exercise of the monarch's personal power. However this may have been, that power was in itself vividly realised at Rome, and capable of being used with a high hand. Two unmistakable facts show this distinctly. First, as we have already seen, the Roman genius for politics had by this time produced a technical word, imperium, for plenary magisterial and military power, and this proves that they had a more definite conception of what such power meant than the Athenians, who had no such word. Secondly, there can be no doubt that the last of the Roman kings tried to carry the exercise of this imperium beyond the limits which a reverential custom had set upon it — to turn it, in fact, into a tyranny. Tarquinius Superbus is no mythical figure in Roman history. Though we need not believe the stories told of him, some of which can be traced to non-Roman sources, we may take it for granted that there was really such a king, that he was an Etruscan by birth, and that he used the imperium in a way which was foreign to Roman custom. Had there been no such king, it would doubtless have been found necessary sooner or later to modify the practical working of the imperium in the hands of a single man; but the conduct of Tarquinius hastened the critical moment.