The circumstances of the times, therefore, combined with the spreading moral pestilence to give a desperation to this contest, from which the early dissensions of patricians and plebeians, happily for Rome, were free. Here each party had a definite object to contend for; the one, the relaxation of oppressive privileges; the other, to maintain unimpaired the immunities and dignity of their order: and each had wisdom, the one to be moderate in its demands; the other to concede moderately, rather than hazard the very being of the state by an appeal to arms. No personal or political hatred inflamed the passions, unless where some enslaved debtor was maddened by suffering, or some hot–headed patrician, such as the old legends of Rome represented Coriolanus to be, became impatient that the swinish multitude should believe they had rights; each party felt that the other was necessary to its welfare, and though driven to violence, the plebeians still looked up with respect and affection to their hereditary aristocracy. As these disturbances belong to an earlier, so the civil wars of Marius and Sylla, and those which ended in the establishment of the Empire, belong, we think, to a more advanced stage of society than does the Corcyrean sedition, which is compared to them in the foregoing quotation. Rome had reached, and had passed the period at which a true democracy becomes impossible except through the medium of representation; while at Corcyra, even when the popular faction was supreme, the government was an oligarchy, in respect of the _whole_ population of the state, of which slaves and foreigners constituted, we may presume, a considerable majority. The legislative and the armed body were identical; a part of that body might triumph over the rest, but no one could mount on the shoulders of the people to a military despotism, and then kick away the step by which he had risen. No leader seems to have risen to the absolute power of Marius, or Sylla, or Cæsar; if there had, it must have been by consent of the prevailing party, who would therefore have been implicated in his actions. At Rome the case was very different: the legislative authority centred in the resident citizens, the military power of the state was more than equally shared with them by the provincial armies, composed partly of barbarians, partly of subjects of the state, entitled to a greater or lesser share of the privileges of citizenship, but not to vote in the assemblies of the people, and partly, it is true, of citizens, but those long absent from the seat of government, and careless about politics, but devoted to the leader who had led them on to plunder, honour, and victory. Some faction therefore was to be courted to gain place and power, but he who had gained them, and with them military command and influence, was in great measure independent of his former associates. Sylla and Marius were terrible to friends as well as foes,