these measures and the magistrates execute them.  In 200 B.C. the Senate decided on war with the king of Macedon, but the people in terror refused to approve it:  the Senate then ordered a magistrate to convoke the comitia anew and to adopt a more persuasive speech.  This time the people voted for the war.  In Rome it was the people who reigned, just as is the case with the king in England, but it was the Senate that governed.

=The Offices.=—­Being magistrate or senator in Rome is not a profession.  Magistrates or senators spend their time and their money without receiving any salary.  A magistracy in Rome is before all an honor.  Entrance to it is to nobles, at most to knights, but always to the rich; but these come to the highest magistracies only after they have occupied all the others.  The man who aims one day to govern Rome must serve in the army during ten campaigns.  Then he may be elected quaestor and he receives the administration of the state treasury.  After this he becomes aedile, charged with the policing of the city and with the provision of the corn supply.  Later he is elected praetor and gives judgment in the courts.  Later yet, elected consul, he commands an army and presides over the assemblies.  Then only may he aspire to the censorship.  This is the highest round of the ladder and may be reached hardly before one’s fiftieth year.  The same man has therefore, been financier, administrator, judge, general, and governor before arriving at this original function of censor, the political distribution of the Roman people.  This series of offices is what is called the “order of the honors.”  Each of these functions lasts but one year, and to rise to the one next higher a new election is necessary.  In the year which precedes the voting one must show one’s self continually in the streets, “circulate” as the Romans say (ambire:  hence the word “ambition"), to solicit the suffrages of the people.  For all this time it is the custom to wear a white toga, the very sense of the word “candidate” (white garment).

FOOTNOTES: 

[117] Probably some of the plebeians originated in non-noble Roman families.—­ED.

[118] We know the story of this contest only through Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; their very dramatic account has become celebrated, but it is only a legend frequently altered by falsifiers.

[119] The pontificate was opened to the plebeians by the Ogulnian Law of 300 B.C.  The first plebeian pontifex maximus was in 254 B.C.  Livy, Epitome, xviii.—­ED.

[120] This qualification was set in the last century of the republic.—­ED.

[121] He cites several of their old proverbs:  “A bad farmer is one who buys what his land can raise.”  “It is bad economy to do in the day what can be done at night.”

[122] After the completion of the census.—­ED.

CHAPTER XX