Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/243

VIII of parts, and apparently quite unconscious either of weakness inherent in it, or danger about to beset it. Our materials are therefore sufficient; we can make no serious mistake about this constitution.

And what then was it? The answer may well be startling and even paradoxical to those who have not yet studied the Roman character, or learnt to recognise the sternly tenacious conservatism of the Roman political mind. Though the conditions of the Roman City-State have entirely changed, though she has already become an imperial State, and though her sway now extends from Macedonia to Spain, the constitution remains in outward form precisely what it was a hundred and fifty years earlier. It is still democratic — not indeed in the Athenian sense, but in a sense in which we often use the word now. The people are sovereign in legislation, and in the most important judicial cases; they decide on peace and war; they elect their magistrates yearly. They are sovereign whenever they are called on to act, and they must of necessity be called on frequently. "One might reasonably conclude," says Polybius, describing the position of the Demos at Rome, "that it has the greatest share of power, and that the constitution is of the most pronounced democratic type."

But this constitution, as it was actually worked in practice, was no more a democracy than the British constitution is a monarchy. It was not even what Polybius pronounced it to be, after surveying its several parts, — a constitution in which the elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy were all