The increasing compass of the Roman dominion might demand many modifications of detail, the addition of many special appliances, in the constitutional machinery. But it cannot be said that the scheme of the Constitution itself was essentially and fundamentally inadequate to imperial requirements. If the act by which Cæsar overthrew the Constitution is to be defended as a political necessity, it must be defended on the ground that the Constitution had become diseased beyond the hope of remedy.
The process of decay, which the Gracchi made the first serious effort to arrest, might be described as the break-up of an aristocratic commonwealth into two elements, an oligarchy and a rabble. The Senate was losing public spirit, and the people were becoming incapable of expressing or enforcing a public opinion. Sulla's legislation was the crisis. It does not greatly matter, for our present purpose, what precise view we are to take of Sulla's personal character and genius. The high-born voluptuary who, tearing himself away from dinner-parties and actresses, condescends to become the greatest soldier and then the greatest statesman of his age, and finally, having made these sacrifices, returns to the pursuits of his choice, has naturally exercised the imagination of literary artists. We may conceive him, if we please, as the inspired Don Juan of politics, or we may take the prosaic view, and set him down as a more ordinary compound of ability, cruelty, and lust. But at any rate there is no doubt as to the distinctive mark of his work. It was the
