Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/259

VIII adaptation of means to ends to which no novice in statesmanship can readily attain. And lastly, this task of conquest and organisation could not be fulfilled without sobriety in debate, unity in action, and that good sense and self-restraint which alone can make a State orderly, and allow it to put forth its full strength whenever it strikes a blow.

All these rare gifts were to be found in the Roman Senate of this period; not high intellectual gifts, but perseverance, industry, honesty, orderliness, and good sense. Probably no body of men has ever sat together for consultation so richly endowed with these unpretentious qualities; and the reason lay not only in the Roman character (of which I have a word to say directly), but in the traditions of those noble families of whose scions the Senate was composed. To those men office meant really work, and work meant distinction and honour; all had served the State from their youth, and most of them had learnt how to serve it from their fathers. If they had only been called on to transact the ordinary duties of a Greek, these traditions might have had less force, and the peculiar capacity of the Roman senator might never have been developed; but, drawn on as she was from war to war, Rome produced exactly the kind of Statesmanship she most needed, and produced it also in abundance. We need, then, feel no surprise that in all departments of government the Senate, in which was gathered all the wisdom and experience of the State, should have gradually drawn the actual conduct of business into its own hands. And we have only to read a