JULIUS CAESAR. '151 



tive government many usages from the Latin and Etruscan 

 states. These were progressively moulded and modified as 

 with us ; in some cases by convenience or necessity, in 

 others by the direct collision of different influences and 

 classes. In both instances the result may in part be attri- 

 buted to the comparative insulation from neighbouring states. 

 While the Etruscan and Latin cities were engaged in con- 

 federacies, more or less extensive and binding, Eome was 

 almost always single in her course^of action. Her connections 

 with other states were mainly those of conquest and supre- 

 macy. Her institutions, whether of peace or war, all apper- 

 tained to the City itself. Her rights of citizenship, even 

 when most extended by prudence or necessity, flowed from 

 within to without. Her colonies, unlike those of the Greeks, 

 never assumed the condition of independence. Her most 

 distant wars were conducted, her most distant provinces 

 ruled, by men chosen within the walls. The forms and 

 superstitions of the national religion were maintained wher- 

 ever her arms or her magistracy were present. Conditions 

 like these, however originating, could not exist without large 

 influence on the destinies of a state. Yet the greatness 

 thereby created had in it a germ of decay, derived from those 

 very elements of power, and growing with their operation. 



In one of Hume's essays he mentions three anomalies of 

 government as among the most singular which history af- 

 fords the <ypa<t>r) Trapavopcov of Athens, the relation of the 

 Comitia Centuriata and Comitia Tributa of Eome, and the 

 impressment of seamen in England. The second of these is, 

 indeed, a striking instance of the peculiarity and integrity 

 of Roman institutions. Here were two distinct legislative 

 bodies ; opposed to each other in origin, interests, and man- 

 ner of action ; yet, amidst all the civil contests in Rome, the 

 only instance of actual collision between them is one re- 

 corded by Appian, trivial in itself, and happening at a time 



