Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/123

Rh like the constitutions of Lycurgus, Solon, and Zaleucus; and it is evidently been produced under Greek influence. Particular analogies may be deceptive, such as the coincidence already noticed by the ancients, that in Corinth also widows and orphans were charged with the provision of horses for the cavalry; but the adoption of the armour and arrangements of the Greek hoplite system was certainly no accidental coincidence. Now if we consider the fact that it was in the second century of the city that the Greek states in Lower Italy advanced from the pure clan-constitution to a modified one, which placed the preponderance in the hands of the landholders, we shall recognize in that movement the impulse which called forth in Rome the Servian reform, a change of constitution resting in the main on the same fundamental idea, and only directed into a somewhat different course by the strictly monarchical form of the Roman state.