Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/346

322 natural capacity of endurance. And lastly, there was that fatal stasis within the State itself of which I have already spoken, paralysing the energies of men whose attention should have been given to the work of union and defence, narrowing their views, embittering their hatreds, and making all honest discussion in the great council ever more hopeless and impossible.

If in fact we test the Roman dominion in the last century of the Republic by our definition of the State as given in chapter i., it is difficult to see in what sense it could be called a State at all. Of the natural ties it had none; neither community of race or religion, nor of common feeling and history. The common government which constitutes the chief artificial bond in a State it was indeed supposed to possess; but this government had grown to be so weakened and discredited, so beset by enemies within and without, that it could hardly be said to exist except in name. The oligarchical Senate could no longer keep its magistrates under control, and save in this Senate, to which the whole world had once looked up with reverence, there was no central unifying influence to be found. From the City-State, whether in Rome or her dependencies, there was no longer any regenerating influence to be looked for; its part in the history of the world had been played to the end. It is clear that we have come at last to the end of our story; that one City-State has sucked the life out of all the rest, and has herself lost her ancient Statehood in the gigantic effort. From this last century of the