the rank of consul, and stimulated by the vigorous theorisings of his hellenised environment, he contemplated for a moment the formation of a plan which should deal with some of the worst evils of the agrarian question. But he looked at the problem only to start back in affright. The strength and truculency of the vested interests with which he would have to deal were too much for a man whose nerve was weakened by philosophy and experience, and Laelius by his retreat justified, if he did not gain, the soubriquet which proclaimed his "sapience".[299] But why was Scipio himself idle? The answer is to be found both in his temperament and in his circumstances. With all his dash and energy, he was something of a healthy hedonist. As the chase had delighted him in his youth, so did war in his manhood. While hating its cruelties, he gloried in its excitement, and the discipline of the camp was more to his mind than the turbulence of an assembly. His mind, too, belonged to that class which finds it almost impossible to emancipate itself from traditional politics. His vast knowledge of the history of other civilisations may have taught him, as it taught Polybius, that Rome was successful because she was unique.[300] Here there was to be no break with the past, no legislator posing as a demi-god, no obedience to the cries of the masses who, if they once got loose, might turn and rend the enlightened few, and reproduce on Italian soil the shocking scenes of Greek socialistic enterprise. As things were, to be a reformer was to be a partisan, and Scipio loved the prospect of his probable supporters as little as that of his probable opponents. The fact of the Empire, too, must have weighed heavily with a man who was no blind imperialist. Even though economic reform might create an added efficiency in the army, Scipio must have known, as Polybius certainly knew, that soldiers are but pawns in the great game, and that the controlling forces were the wisdom of the conservative senator, the ambition of the wealthy noble, and the capital of the enterprising knight. The wisdom of disturbing their influence, and awakening their resentment, could scarcely appeal to a mind so perfectly balanced and practical as Scipio's. Circumstances, too, must have had their share in determining his quiescence. The Scipios had been a power in Rome in spite of the nobility. They were used because they were needed, not because they were loved, and the necessary man was never in much favour with the senate. Although there was no tie of blood between Aemilianus and the elder Scipio, they were much alike both in fortune and in temperament. They had both been called upon to save military situations that were thought desperate; their reputation had been made by successful war; and though neither was a mere soldier, they lacked the taste and the patience for the complicated political game, which alone made a man a power amidst the noble circles and their immediate dependants at Rome.