THE GREATNESS OF TEE ROMANS. 



165 



ancient Rome was a republic there can be no 

 doubt. Even the so-called monarchy appears 

 clearly to have been elective; and republicanism 

 may be described broadly with reference to its 

 origin, as the government of the city and of the 

 artisan, while monarchy and aristocracy are the 

 governments of the country and of farmers. 



The legend which ascribes the assembly of 

 centuries to the legislation of Servius probably 

 belongs to the same class as the legend which 

 ascribes trial by jury and the division of England 

 into shires to the legislation of Alfred. Still the 

 assembly of centuries existed; it was evidently 

 ancient, belonging apparently to a stratum of in- 

 stitutions anterior to the assembly of tribes ; 

 and it vras a constitution distributing political 

 power and duties according to a property qualifi- 

 cation which, in the upper grades, must, for the 

 period, have been high though measured by a 

 primitive currency. The existence of such quali- 

 fications, and the social ascendency of wealth 

 which the constitution implies, are inconsistent 

 with the theory of a merely agricultural and mili- 

 tary Rome. Who would think of framing such 

 a constitution, say, for one of the rural districts 

 of France? 



Other indications of the real character of the 

 prehistoric Rome might be mentioned. The pre- 

 ponderance of the infantry and the comparative 

 weakness of the cavalry is an almost certain sign 

 of democracy, and of the social state in which 

 democracy takes its birth — at least in the case of 

 a country which did not, like Arcadia or Switzer- 

 land, preclude by its nature the growth of a cav- 

 alry force ; but on the contrary was rather favor- 

 able to it. Nor would it be easy to account for 

 the strong feeling of attachment to the city 

 which led to its restoration when it had been de- 

 stroyed by the Gauls, and defeated the project of 

 a migration to Veii, if Rome was nothing but a 

 collection of miserable huts, the abodes of a tribe 

 of marauders. We have, moreover, the actual 

 traces of an industrial organization in the exist- 

 ence of certain guilds of artisans, which may have 

 been more important at first than they were when 

 the military spirit had become thoroughly as- 

 cendant. 



Of course, when Rome had once been drawn 

 into the career of conquest, the ascendency of 

 the military spirit would be complete ; war, and 

 the organization of territories acquired in war, 

 would then become the great occupation of her 

 leading citizens ; industry and commerce would 

 fall into disesteem, and be deemed unworthy of 

 the members of the imperial race. Carthage 



would no doubt have undergone a similar change 

 of character, had the policy which was carried to 

 its greatest height by the aspiring house of Bar- 

 cas succeeded in converting her from a trading 

 city into the capital of a great military empire. 

 So would Venice, had she been able to carry on 

 her system of couquest in the Levant and of ter- 

 ritorial aggrandizement on the Italian mainland. 

 The career of Venice was arrested by the League 

 of Cambray. On Carthage the policy of military 

 aggrandizement, which was apparently resisted 

 by the sage instinct of the great merchants while 

 it was supported by the professional soldiers and 

 ■ the populace, brought utter ruin; while Rome 

 paid the inevitable penalty of military despotism. 

 Even when the Roman nobles had become a caste 

 of conquerors and proconsuls, they retained cer- 

 tain mercantile habits ; unlike the French aris- 

 tocracy, and aristocracies generally, they were 

 careful keepers of their accounts, and they showed 

 a mercantile talent for business, as well as a more 

 than mercantile hardness, in their financial ex- 

 ploitation of the conquered world. Brutus and 

 his contemporaries were usurers like the patri- 

 cians of the early times. No one, we venture to 

 think, who has been accustomed to study na- 

 tional character, will believe that the Roman 

 character was formed by war alone : it was mani- 

 festly formed by war combined with business. 



To what extent the latter character of Rome 

 affected national tradition, or rather fiction, as to 

 her original character, we see from the fable 

 which tells us that she had no navy before the 

 first Punic War, and that, when compelled to build 

 a fleet by the exigencies of lost war, she had to 

 copy a Carthaginian war-galley which had been 

 cast ashore, and to train her rowers by exercising 

 them on dry land. She had a fleet before the 

 war with Pyrrhus, probably from the time at 

 which she took possession of Antium, if not be- 

 fore ; and even if her first treaty with Carthage 

 is to be assigned to the date to which Mommsen 

 and not to that to which Polybius assigns it, that 

 treaty shows that before 348 b. c. she had an in- 

 terest in a wide seaboard, which must have car- 

 ried with it some amount of maritime power. 



Now, this wealthy and as we suppose indus- 

 trial and commercial city was the chief place, 

 and in course of time became the mistress and 

 protectress, of a plain large for that part of Italy, 

 and then in such a condition as to be tempting 

 to the spoiler. Over this plain on two sides hung 

 ranges of mountains inhabited by hill tribes, 

 Sabines, ^Equians, Volscians, Hernicans, with the 

 fierce and restless Samnite in the rear. No doubt 



