for thoroughly rebuilding or renewing it, and the question is no longer whether, but simply when, the structure will fall.  During no epoch did the Roman constitution remain formally so stable as in the period from the Sicilian to the third Macedonian war and for a generation beyond it; but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a sign of the health of the state, but a token of incipient sickness and the harbinger of revolution.

Notes for Chapter XI

1.  II.  III.  New Aristocracy

2.  II.  III.  New Opposition

3.  II.  III.  Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

4.  All these insignia probably belonged on their first emergence only to the nobility proper, i. e. to the agnate descendants of curule magistrates; although, after the manner of such decorations, all of them in course of time were extended to a wider circle.  This can be distinctly proved in the case of the gold finger-ring, which in the fifth century was worn only by the nobility (Plin.  H. N., xxxiii. i. 18), in the sixth by every senator and senator’s son (Liv. xxvi. 36), in the seventh by every one of equestrian rank, under the empire by every one who was of free birth.  So also with the silver trappings, which still, in the second Punic war, formed a badge of the nobility alone (Liv. xxvi. 37); and with the purple border of the boys’ toga, which at first was granted only to the sons of curule magistrates, then to the sons of equites, afterwards to those of all free-born persons, lastly—­yet as early as the time of the second Punic war —­even to the sons of freedmen (Macrob.  Sat. i. 6).  The golden amulet-case (-bulla-) was a badge of the children of senators in the time of the second Punic war (Macrob. l. c.; Liv. xxvi. 36), in that of Cicero as the badge of the children of the equestrian order (Cic.  Verr. i. 58, 152), whereas children of inferior rank wore the leathern amulet (-lorum-).  The purple stripe (-clavus-) on the tunic was a badge of the senators (I.  V. Prerogatives of the Senate) and of the equites, so that at least in later times the former wore it broad, the latter narrow; with the nobility the -clavus- had nothing to do.

5.  II.  III.  Civic Equality

6.  Plin.  H. N. xxi. 3, 6.  The right to appear crowned in public was acquired by distinction in war (Polyb. vi. 39, 9; Liv. x. 47); consequently, the wearing a crown without warrant was an offence similar to the assumption, in the present day, of the badge of a military order of merit without due title.

7.  II.  III.  Praetorship

8.  Thus there remained excluded the military tribunate with consular powers (ii.  III.  Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies) the proconsulship, the quaestorship, the tribunate of the people, and several others.  As to the censorship, it does not appear, notwithstanding the curule chair of the censors (Liv. xl. 45; comp, xxvii. 8), to have been reckoned a curule office; for the later period, however, when only a man of consular standing could be made censor, the question has no practical importance.  The plebeian aedileship certainly was not reckoned originally one of the curule magistracies (Liv. xxiii. 23); it may, however, have been subsequently included amongst them.