In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy and a democracy still undeveloped but already cankered in the bud were interwoven in a manner pregnant with fatal results.  According to their party names, which were first heard during this period, the “Optimates” wished to give effect to the will of the best, the “Populares” to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining community.  Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites.  Both were equally affected by political corruption, and both were in fact equally worthless.  Both were necessarily tied down to the status quo, for neither on the one side nor on the other was there found any political idea—­to say nothing of any political plan—­reaching beyond the existing state of things; and accordingly the two parties were so entirely in agreement that they met at every step as respected both means and ends, and a change of party was a change of political tactics more than of political sentiments.  The commonwealth would beyond doubt have been a gainer, if either the aristocracy had directly introduced a hereditary rotation instead of election by the burgesses, or the democracy had produced from within it a real demagogic government.  But these Optimates and these Populares of the beginning of the seventh century were far too indispensable for eachother to wage such internecine war; they not only could not destroy each other, but, even if they had been able to do so, they would not have been willing.  Meanwhile the commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and was verging towards utter disorganization.

Social Crisis

The crisis with which the Roman revolution was opened arose not out of this paltry political conflict, but out of the economic and social relations which the Roman government allowed, like everything else, simply to take their course, and which thus found opportunity to bring the morbid matter, that had been long fermenting, without hindrance and with fearful rapidity and violence to maturity.  From a very early period the Roman economy was based on the two factors —­always in quest of each other, and always at variance—­the husbandry of the small farmer and the money of the capitalist.  The latter in the closest alliance with landholding on a great scale had already for centuries waged against the farmer-class a war, which seemed as though it could not but terminate in the destruction first of the farmers and thereafter of the whole commonwealth, but was broken off without being properly decided in consequence of the successful wars and the comprehensive and ample distribution of domains for which these wars gave facilities.  It has already been shown(5) that in the same age, which renewed the distinction between patricians and plebeians under altered names, the disproportionate