The interest of those two parties--the Plebeians and the Patricians--concurred fully but in one point--the desire which both had of constantly invading the neighbouring nations, and obtaining landed possessions for themselves, in the conquests they made for the state. The Plebeians ever and again cherished the hope of being able to obtain for their profit, and that of the poorer citizens, a sort of distribution of the state-lands won in war. But as the Patricians were mostly invested with all the high offices and dignities in war as well as peace, they knew how to turn all the opportunities of conquest to their best advantage, however much they might on particular occasions postpone their private interests as individuals to the general interests of the state. Although, so long as their ancient principles remained unchanged, the Romans were distinguished for the utmost disinterestedness in regard to their country, and for great simplicity of manners, and even frugality in private life, they were in all their foreign enterprises, even in the earliest times, exceedingly covetous of gain, or rather of land; for it was in land, and the produce of the soil, that their principal, and almost only wealth consisted. The old Romans were a thoroughly agricultural people; and it was only at a later period that commerce, trades and arts were introduced among them; and even then they occupied but a subordinate place. Agriculture was even highly honoured by the Romans; and while almost all the celebrated, and in general, most of the proper, names among the Greeks were derived from gods and heroes, and had a poetical lustre, and glorious significancy, it is a circumstance characteristic of the Romans, that the names of many of their most distinguished families, such as Fabius, Lentulus, Piso, Cicero and many others were taken from agriculture, and from vegetables; while others again, as Secundus, Quintus, Septimus, and Octavius, are tolerably prosaic, and are derived from the numbers of the old popular reckoning. The science of agriculture forms one of the few subjects on which the Romans produced writers truly original. That of jurisprudence, in which they were most at home, which they cultivated with peculiar care, and which they very considerably enlarged, had its foundation in the written laws of the primitive period of their history; and in their elder jurisprudence, the Agrarian system very evidently prevails. As a robust, agricultural people, they were eminently fitted for military service; and in practised vigour and constancy under every privation, the Roman infantry with the vigorous masses of its legion, surpassed all military bodies that have ever been organized.