But not only did these natural causes co-operate to produce a metropolitan rabble:  neither the nobility nor the demagogues, moreover, can be acquitted from the reproach of having systematically nursed its growth, and of having undermined, so far as in them lay, the old public spirit by flattery of the people and things still worse.  The electors as a body were still too respectable to admit of direct electoral corruption showing itself on a great scale; but the favour of those entitled to vote was indirectly courted by methods far from commendable.  The old obligation of the magistrates, particularly of the aediles, to see that corn could be procured at a moderate price and to superintend the games, began to degenerate into the state of things which at length gave rise to the horrible cry of the city populace under the Empire, “Bread for nothing and games for ever!” Large supplies of grain, cither placed by the provincial governors at the disposal of the Roman market officials, or delivered at Rome free of cost by the provinces themselves for the purpose of procuring favour with particular Roman magistrates, enabled the aediles, from the middle of the sixth century, to furnish grain to the population of the capital at very low prices.  “It was no wonder,” Cato considered, “that the burgesses no longer listened to good advice—­the belly forsooth had no ears.”

Festivals

Popular amusements increased to an alarming extent.  For five hundred years the community had been content with one festival in the year, and with one circus.  The first Roman demagogue by profession, Gaius Flaminius, added a second festival and a second circus (534);(45) and by these institutions—­the tendency of which is sufficiently indicated by the very name of the new festival, “the plebeian games”—­he probably purchased the permission to give battle at the Trasimene lake.  When the path was once opened, the evil made rapid progress.  The festival in honour of Ceres, the goddess who protected the plebeian order,(46) must have been but little, if at all, later than the plebeian games.  On the suggestion of the Sibylline and Marcian prophecies, moreover, a fourth festival was added in 542 in honour of Apollo, and a fifth in 550 in honour of the “Great Mother” recently transplanted from Phrygia to Rome.  These were the severe years of the Hannibalic war—­on the first celebration of the games of Apollo the burgesses were summoned from the circus itself to arms; the superstitious fear peculiar to Italy was feverishly excited, and persons were not wanting who took advantage of the opportunity to circulate Sibylline and prophetic oracles and to recommend themselves to the multitude through their contents and advocacy:  we can scarcely blame the government, which was obliged to call for so enormous sacrifices from the burgesses, for yielding in such matters.  But what was once conceded had to be continued; indeed, even in more peaceful times (581) there was added another festival, although