Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/275

Rh Rome, but likewise among the other Latins, as among the Sabellians, Etruscans, and Apulians—in fact, in all the Italian communities, just as in those of Greece—we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded by annual magistrates. In the case of the Lucanian canton there is evidence that it had a democratic government in time of peace, and it was only in the event of war that the magistrates appointed a king, that is, a magistrate similar to the Roman dictator. The Sabellian civic communities in like manner, e. g. those of Capua and Pompeii, in later times were governed by a "community-manager" (medix tuticus) from year to year, and we may assume that similar institutions existed among the other national and civic communities of Italy. In this light the reasons which Led to the substitution of consuls for kings in Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity, through its own action and by a sort of natural necessity, produced the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part, an annual, term. Simple, however, as was the cause of the change, it might be brought about in various ways; a resolution might be adopted on the death of one life-ruler not to elect another—a course which the Roman senate is said to have attempted after the death of Romulus; or the king might voluntarily abdicate, affirmed to have been the intention of King Servius Tullius; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him.

It was by this latter method that the monarchy was terminated in Rome. For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquin, "the proud," may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt hat the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors; that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labours and task-work beyond what was due. The exasperation of the people is attested by the formal vow which they made man by man for themselves and for their posterity that thenceforth they would not tolerate a king; by the blind hatred, with which the name of king