When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy restored by him ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. It was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs. There were the men of positive law, who neither mingled in nor understood politics, but who detested the arbitrary procedure of Sulla in dealing with the lives and property of the burgesses. Even during the regent's lifetime, when all other opposition was silent, the strict jurists were refractory; the Cornelian laws, for example, which deprived various Italian communities of the Roman franchise, were treated in judicial decisions as null and void, and in like manner the courts held that, where a burgess had been made a prisoner of war and sold into slavery during the revolution, his franchise was not forfeited. There was, further, the Aristocrats remnant of the old liberal minority in the senate, which in friendly former times had sought a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and was now in a similar spirit inclined to modify the rigidly oligarchic constitution of Sulla by concessions to the Populares.

The resources on either side

Aems were thus to decide which of the two men who had hitherto jointly ruled Rome was now to be its sole ruler. Let us see what were the comparative resources at the disposal of Cæsar and Pompeius for the impending struggle.

Cæsar's absolute power within his our party

Labienus

Cæsar's power rested primarily on the wholly unlimited authority which he enjoyed within his own party. If the ideas of democracy and of monarchy met together in it, this was not the result of a coalition which had been accidentally entered into and might be accidentally dissolved; on the contrary it was involved in the very essence of a democracy without a representative constitution, that democracy and monarchy should find in Cæsar at once their highest and ultimate expression. In political as in military matters throughout the first and the final decision lay with Cæsar. However high the honour in which he held any serviceable instrument, it remained an instrument still; Cæsar stood in his own party without confederates, surrounded only by military-political adjutants, who as a rule had risen, from the army and as soldiers were trained never to ask the reason and purpose of anything, but unconditionally to obey. On this account especially, at the decisive moment when the civil war began, of ail the officers and soldiers of Cæsar one alone refused him obedience; and the circumstance that that one was precisely the foremost of them all, simply confirms this view of the relation of Cæsar to his adherents.

The Sullan constitution still stood unshaken. The assault, which Lepidus and Sertoriua had ventured to make on it, had been repulsed with little loss. The government had neglected, it is true, to finish the half-completed building in the energetic spirit of its author. It is characteristic of the government, that it neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according to the old system of occupation which was de jure and de facto set aside by the Gracchan reforms (iii. 357). Whatever in the Sullan enactments was indifferent or inconvenient for the Optimates, was without scruple ignored or cancelled; such as, the sentences by which whole communities were deprived of the state-franchise, the prohibition against conjoining the new farms, and several of the charters conferred by Sulla on particular communities—naturally, however, without giving back to the communities the sums paid for these exemptions. But though these violations of the ordinances of Sulla by the government itself contributed to shake the foundations of his structure, the Sempronian laws were and remained substantially abolished.

Assurément on ne pouvait rien imaginer de plus solidement constitué que cette famille des anciens âges qui contenait en elle ses dieux, son culte, son prêtre, son magistrat. Rien de plus fort que cette cité qui avait aussi en elle-même sa religion, ses dieux protecteurs, son sacerdoce indépeudant, qui commandait à l'âme autant qu'au corps de l'homme, et qui, infiniment plus puissante que l'État d'aujourd'hui, réunissait en elle la double autorité que nous voyons partagee de nos jours entre l'État et l'Église. Si une société a été constituée pour durer, c'était bien celle-là. Elle a eu pourtant, comme tout ce qui est humain, sa série de révolutions.

On ne peut pas dire d'une maniére générale à quelle époque ces révolutions oat commencé. On conçoit en effet que cette époque n'ait pas été la même pour les differentes cités de la Grèce et de l'ltalie. Ce qui est certain, c'est que dès le septième siècle avant notre ère, cette organisation sociale était discutée et attaquée presque pariout. A partir de ce temps-là, elle ne se soutint plus qu'avec peine et par un mélange plus ou moins habile de résistance et de concessions. Elle se debattit ainsi plusieurs siècles, au milieu de luttes perpétuelles, et enfin elle disparut.

Les causes qui l'ont fait périr peuvent se réduire à deux. L'une est le changement qui s'est opéré a la longue dans les idées par suite du développement naturel de l'esprithumain, etqui, eneffaçant les antiques croyances, a fait crouler en même temps l'édifice social que ces croyances avaient élevé et pouvaient seules soutenir.