ON THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE ROMANS. 209 



fied in Rome were united ! Even although his avowed aim and 

 object were the downfall of their country ; yet because, at this 

 price, they hoped to purchase revenge against their enemies, an 

 unrestrained license to plunder in a wealthy community, and an 

 unlimited indulgence of every appetite and passion, many of the 

 noblest of this degenerated city had their blood shed in that abomi- 

 nable conspiracy, by the hand of the public executioner ! Evil, in- 

 deed, must have been, and must ever be, the aspect of affairs in that 

 state where senators and public officers can unite with one de- 

 nounced, in the most solemn manner, as the enemy of their country, 

 simply for the accomplishment of their own private interest, or their 

 own base and misplaced ambition ! 



The Romans, I repeat, though theirs was still a military state, 

 were no longer what they had been — a nation of soldiers. Their 

 legions were probably officered still, though not entirely so, by 

 Italians ; but the ranks were recruited from the athletic natives of 

 many a conquered country. It was with an army trained in Roman 

 discipline, but probably recruited in Gaul, that Caesar fought his 

 way to absolute power and dominion. The pay, the immunities, 

 the license, and the esprit du corps of the Roman army, kept up its 

 discipline, and therefore its valour, for ages and centuries after 

 the liberties of the commonwealth had been offered upon the sap- 

 pliant knees of the degenerate senate to every one, in turn, of the 

 many successful adventurers who held the sword of victory suspend- 

 ed over the heads of its degraded members. 



But from the period of the fall of Carthage the demoralization of 

 Rome was rapidly advancing. The Jugurthan war was another 

 event which proves the celerity of her decay. It is notorious that 

 Jugurtha bribed the executive government of Rome, patricians as 

 well as plebians, to make a most iniquitous decree in his own favour 

 and to the prejudice of the grandsons of Masinissa, the friend of 

 Scipio and the faithful ally of Rome. It is Sallust who, relating 

 the very words of Jugurtha upon that occasion, has stamped this in- 

 delible disgrace upon his country: — " O Rome !" exclaimed the Af- 

 rican, as he turned his back upon the degenerate city of Fabricius, 

 " how readily wouldst thou sell thyself, if there were only a pur- 

 chaser rich enough to buy thee !" Can we believe this to be the 

 same city in which the bribes of Pyrrhus had been scorned, and 

 where the consul Curius had asked the ambassadors of the Samnites 

 — scarcely raising his eyes from the turnips he was peeling for his 

 supper — " what could the use of money be to one contented with 

 ■hi li humble fare ?" 



VOL. VIII., no. xxiv. 27 



