152 ROMAN HISTORY: 



when the Eepublic was well nigh extinct. No one before- 

 hand could have predicted such a result. No state has 

 afforded a similar example. 



The office of Dictator, in itself almost as great an anomaly, 

 must be counted among the most admirable of the Roman 

 institutions. Based on the principle of preservation of the 

 commonwealth, it rested for its action on public virtue and 

 obedience to law ; and it is wonderful for how long a period, 

 whenever the agency was invoked, this confidence was justi- 

 fied by the result. Some partial analogies to the office might 

 be found elsewhere ; but none approaching it in grandeur 

 and efficacy. It is purely Eoman in its every part ; in the 

 choice of men ; in the limitation as to time ; in the fre- 

 quent surrender of the dignity the moment its object was 

 fulfilled; and even in the law, trivial as it may seem, 

 which forbade the supreme functionary to appear on horse- 

 back without permission of the people. A void of more than 

 a century had occurred in the Dictatorship when Sylla as- 

 sumed it. But it was the name only, without the ancient 

 virtue of the office. The Dictator was now the military 

 tyrant of the State, no longer the guardian of its safety and 

 freedom. The fact is one which well illustrates the mighty 

 change that had already taken place in the social and poli- 

 tical condition of Rome. 



The author who is about to record the change and decay 

 of the Roman constitution ought clearly to expound this con- 

 stitution in its nascent and progressive state. Mr. Merivale 

 has given a rapid but faithful summary of the struggles on 

 the agrarian laws ; of the momentous changes which raised 

 the plebs to equality of privilege with the populus ; of the 

 principle of Roman colonisation ; and of the contests and 

 concessions by which the citizenship of Rome was finally ex- 

 tended to all the Italian states. But he says too little re- 

 specting the origin of the Roman people, or of those forms 



