The senate was the only power which ultimately contrived to impose limits upon this independence. In that body the effective authority of the government was concentrated by gradual degrees. In face of the constant augmentation in the number of magistrates it frequently succeeded in getting its own way without much trouble. In the bosom of its members reposed the _arcana imperii_, the secrets of a policy which had known how to make Rome great. Selfishness, consistency, perfidy, perseverance--such were the motives, some noble, and some base, which shaped its resolutions. Yet we cannot deny that there is a certain grandeur in the political aims represented by the senate. Nor did it fail of success; indeed, its achievements were marvellous. In the year 390 B.C. the city of Rome was in the hands of the Gauls, and the Roman body politic had to all appearance perished. Exactly a hundred years later, at the end of the Second Samnite War, Rome was mistress of nearly the whole of Italy. A few years more, and she occupied Tarentum (272) and Rhegium (270). What is the explanation of this prodigious change? It would be unjust not to assign its due share in the matter to the admirable temper of the Roman people. The self-sacrificing patriotism they invariably displayed, their stubborn endurance in perilous times, their manly readiness to hazard everything, even their very lives, if the welfare of the city so required--these qualities marked the Romans of that age, and they are capable of accomplishing great things. By them the admirable military system of Rome was first fitted for the great part it had to play in the history of the world, and became a weapon which never turned back before the most formidable of foes, and gave the assurance of lasting success. In process of time the ancient Servian phalanx had been superseded by an admirably organised and mobile disposition of the troops in maniples of 160 men each. Ranged in three files, with lateral spaces between, these bodies relieved one another during the fight, and thus were able to quell the most vehement onslaught of the enemy by constantly bringing forward fresh troops, which first hurled their long javelins and then charged with their short swords. It became more and more the practice of the Roman state to extend to the lower classes the obligation of military service, which in all other parts of Italy was a privilege of the _assidui_ or freeholders. Large numbers of landless men and freedmen were enrolled in the recruiting districts (_tribus_) in war times by the famous censor Appius Claudius Cæcus.