Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/245

VIII thing in theory and another in fact? How is it possible to retain the form of a democracy while the government is actually in the hands of a few or of one? Even such an elementary account of the Roman system of government as I can find space for in the following pages may possibly throw some light on these questions.

And first let us see what the Roman constitution was in its working form at any year in the period covered by the last books of Livy — say between 200 and 167 B.C. The first point to notice is that the essential mark of an oligarchy is to be found in the executive; the great magistracies are in the hands of a comparatively small number of families. We see, in fact, a reversion to the character of the earlier aristocratic period, as in organic nature we often meet with a "throwing back" to the features of a primitive form. As formerly the consulship could be held only by the limited number of old patrician families, so now, if we look through the consular fasti for the period 300-150 B.C., we shall find the same names constantly recurring. There are now, of course, plebeians also in the list; but the plebeian names also appear again and again, and new names are of comparatively rare occurrence. It is plain that these families, patrician and plebeian alike, have acquired a kind of hereditary right to hold the consulship. The people, it is true, can elect exactly whom they please; but they evidently prefer to