The internal history of the Roman people was no less remarkable. Great dangers from within were successfully surmounted. The conflict between the patricians and the dependent class lasted for hundreds of years. At first tlie Roman State was ruled by a king, with a body of patrician advisers. On the substitution of a dyarchy for a monarchy^ a change ettected not without difficulty — the new office, called the consulship, tenable for one year, was open only to the patrician class. Even from tiie earliest times there appears to have been a popular assembly, which played some part in legis- lation, but to define its powers or to state their exact relation to the powers of the king and senate is impossible. The consuls were elected by the citizen-army, which assembled in classes according to the property qualification of each citizen-soldier. The whole procedure of this assembly was in the hands of its patrician presidents, so that there Avas more of the semblance than the reality of ])ower. Further, the ])lebeian had no appeal against the arbitrary authority of a chief magistrate. At the very beginning of the Republic the famous Valerian law was passed, that no magistrate should put a Roman citizen to death unless the sentence had V)een confirmed by the assembly of citizen-soldiers. This law was always regarded as the great charter of a Roman's liberties, but at first it was difficult to enforce. The plebeians adopted on more than one occasion the plan of deserting the city for a time, and thus wrung concessions from the un- willing patricians. It was in this way that they succeeded in obtaining magistrates of their own, called tribunes, who were authorized to protect them against the consuls. The development of the powers of this magistracy had more to do with the progress of the Roman democracy than any other factor, and even in the Empire the most
importaTit of the Emperor's statutory powers was his ' tribunician authority.' The tribunes convened assemblies of the plebeians, and carried resolutions of importance to that class. The resolutions of this body, which met by tribes, were later on to become the most powerful force in the State, having at a comparatively early period been declared to have the force of laws (B.C. 287). The first plebeian consul was elected in 367, about a century and a half after the traditional date of the establishment of the Republic, and by the end of the fourth century B.C. every office in the State was open to the plebeian class. The plebeians had won all they sought.
The establishment of the equality of the orders was not the establishment of a real democracy. It was the beginning of a new struggle between the governing class, which was mainly plebeian in origin, and the mass of the people. The rapid expansion of the Roman territory, the necessity for the appointment of new magistrates to govern the new countries, and the establishment of a governing class alone possessed of the experience recessary for coi)ing with foreign affairs, tended more and more to \\ithdraw the real power from the popular a.ssemblies and to concentrate it in the hands of the senate. By the theory of tlie consti- tution the popular assemblies had all the power, but in jiractice, between the middle of the 3rd and the beginning of the 1st cent. B.C., the senate Avas all-powerful. Circum.stances also produced great distress among the i)eople in general. In the absence of the farmer, serving in the army abroad, his farm was neglected, and trouble came upon him and his household. He had to borrow money, which in many cases he was unable to repay. His acres were bought by the rich, who worked them with slave labour, which was cheap owing to the enormous influx of captives seized in war. The small landholder disappeared, to join the hungry proletariat in Rome ; and Italy became a country of large estates, which, in the Avords of Pliny, Avrought her ruin. The attempts made by the Gracchi (B.C. 133-122) to redress this state of mat- ters Avere reAvarded Avith assassination. Periodi- cally, to the end of the Republic, agrarian laAvs Avere brought forAvard, but Avere unable to check the evil. Even under the Empire it Avas only partially checked, and a large jjart of the Roman population Avas fed by the Emperors.
A Roman 'province' consisted of the sphere of duty of a magistrate, and the Avord had not pri- marily a territorial application. The inhabitants Avere disarmed and taxed. The main lines under Avhicli a province Avas to be governed Avere set forth in a special laAv, generally drawn up by the senate. This laAv ahvays took account of local conditions, such as the form of government already in existence before annexation, and the favour shoAvn to Rome by particular cities. In some provinces certain States Avere free, such as Athens in the province of Achaia. It Avas the custom to send a body of commissioners to start the neAv constitution on its Avay. Some of these constitutions Avere modified as time Avent on, but others Avhich had been estab- lished in Republican times Avere found still existing in Imperial times. Much Avas left to governors in the time of the Republic. Cruelty and rapacity Avere very common, but incompetence Avas unknoAvn. The provincials could hardly get redress for injuries infli(;ted on them in Republican times. All the eloquence of a Cicero, engaged to plead the cause of tlie province of Sicily, availed only to remove Verres, the cause of the evil ; the evil Avas not healed.