A third distinction was one of a still more general nature; the distinction between the wealthy and the poor, especially such as had been dispossessed or were endangered in possession.  The legal and political relations of Rome led to the rise of a numerous class of farmers—­partly small proprietors who were dependent on the mercy of the capitalist, partly small temporary lessees who were dependent on the mercy of the landlord—­and in many instances deprived individuals as well as whole communities of the lands which they held, without affecting their personal freedom.  By these means the agricultural proletariate became at an early period so powerful as to have a material influence on the destinies of the community.  The urban proletariate did not acquire political importance till a much later epoch.

On these distinctions hinged the internal history of Rome, and, as may be presumed, not less the history—­totally lost to us—­of the other Italian communities.  The political movement within the fully-privileged burgess-body, the warfare between the excluded and excluding classes, and the social conflicts between the possessors and the non-possessors of land—­variously as they crossed and interlaced, and singular as were the alliances they often produced —­were nevertheless essentially and fundamentally distinct.

Abolition of the Life-Presidency of the Community

As the Servian reform, which placed the —­metoikos—­ on a footing of equality in a military point of view with the burgess, appears to have originated from considerations of an administrative nature rather than from any political party-tendency, we may assume that the first of the movements which led to internal crises and changes of the constitution was that which sought to limit the magistracy.  The earliest achievement of this, the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy.  How necessarily this was the result of the natural development of things, is most strikingly demonstrated by the fact, that the same change of constitution took place in an analogous manner through the whole circuit of the Italo-Grecian world.  Not only in Rome, but likewise among the other Latins as well as among the Sabellians, Etruscans, and Apulians—­and generally, in all the Italian communities, just as in those of Greece—­we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates.  In the case of the Lucanian canton there is evidence that it had a democratic government in time of peace, and it was only in the event of war that the magistrates appointed a king, that is, an official similar to the Roman dictator.  The Sabellian civic communities, such as those of Capua and Pompeii, in like manner were in later times governed by a “community-manager” (-medix tuticus-) changed from year to year, and we may assume that similar institutions existed among