to the magistracies and thence to the senate.  Why should not the Italians be allowed the same privilege?  It was neither just nor equitable nor even prudent to exclude them from an equality of rights and the common exercise of civil[38] and political liberty.  The Gracchi were the first to comprehend the changed state of affairs and the result of Roman conquest and administration in Italy.  Their demands in favor of the Italians were profoundly politic.  The Italians would have demanded, with arms in their hands, that which the Gracchi asked for them, had not this attempt been made.  They failed; Fulvius[39] Flaccus, Marius,[40] and Livius Drusus[41] failed in the same attempt, being opposed both by the nobility and the plebs.

The agrarian laws, as we have seen, had been proposed by the senate, in the period which we are considering.  How was it then that the Gracchi had been compelled to take the initiative and that the senate had opposed them?  This contradiction is more apparent than real.  It explains itself in great part by the following considerations.  Upon the breaking down of the aristocracy of birth, the patriciate, the senate was made accessible to the plebeians who had filled the curule magistracies and were possessed of 800,000 sesterces.  Knights were also eligible to the senate to fill vacancies, and it was this fact which caused the equestrian order to be called seminarium senatus.  For some time the new nobles, in order to strengthen their victory and make it permanent, had formed an alliance with the plebeians.  For this reason were made the concessions and distributions of land which the old senators were unable to hinder.  These concessions were the work of the plebeians who had been admitted to the senate.  But when their position was assured and it was no longer necessary for them to make concessions to the commons in order to sustain themselves, they manifested the same passions that the patricians had shown before them.  Livy has expressed the situation very clearly:  “These noble plebeians had been initiated into the same mysteries, and despised the people as soon as they themselves ceased to be despised by the patricians."[42] Thus, then, the unity and fusion which had been established by the tribunician laws disappeared and there again existed two peoples, the rich and the poor.

If we examine into the elements of these two distinct populations, separated by the pride of wealth and the misery and degradation of poverty, we shall understand this.  The new nobility was made up partially of the descendants of the ancient patrician gentes who had adapted themselves to the modifications and transformations in society.  Of these persons, some had adopted the ideas of reform; they had flattered the lower classes in order to obtain power; they profited by their consulships and their prefectures to increase or at least conserve their fortunes.  Others having business capacity gave themselves up to gathering riches;