Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/231

VII opposite. There the collective wisdom of the community seems reflected in the virtue or the ambition of Solon and Cleisthenes, Themistocles and Pericles. The earlier heroes of Roman tradition, Coriolanus, for example, or Camillus, were patrician and conservative; the leaders of progress either were not suffered to survive as heroes, or, as may very well have been the case, had nothing heroic about them. But if they did not leave their features graven on the stone, these Roman builders at least understood their trade; and this is more especially true of the Licinius and Sextius who completed the equalisation of the patrician and plebeian orders.

The work of these two tribunes was as completely rounded off as that of Solon himself Like Solon, they seem to have understood that political advantages are comparatively useless except in the hands of men who are socially and economically comfortable; that agitation is for men who seek comfort, while government is for men whose" discomfort is already alleviated. Thus with their great political law they combined others which were meant to maintain the well-being and numbers of the Roman middle class of freeholders; and for this combination they struggled hard for years, even in spite of the sluggishness of the very class for which they were lighting. They aimed directly at reducing to a minimum the two chronic evils of the Roman economy — large private estates, and the slave-labour employed in their cultivation; so that the smaller holders, now admitted to a full share in the government, might retain their land, or at least find