If the rise of the republic of Rome is difficult to account for, even more difficult is it to explain why such a community endowed with great generals, great statesmen, and great patriots, found it impossible so to modify their republican institutions that the manifest advantages of a sane and well-balanced democracy might be retained unimpaired, and might be extended at the same time to conquered races and nations. The rigidity of Roman republican institutions led to grave and demoralizing social disorders. The victories of Roman arms abroad were accompanied by political degradation at home. It must have been felt as a shock when a local government, admirably devised to promote civic virtues and secure just administration, was found, just as soon as Rome got the better of her numerous enemies, to be such a convenient protection for misrule. As early as the last twenty-five years of the second century before Christ, the machinery of Roman government seems to have been recognized as inadequate to perform its functions. Constitutional methods and precedents were inadequate to solve the agrarian question, nor was there in the state, as an organism, sufficient force either to check an oligarchy of wealth or to impose restrictions on the personal ambitions of successful military leaders such as Marius and Sulla. Some of the fundamental principles of the Roman republican system were now treated as legal fiction. There had been years of civil war, for not only had Rome been attacked by groups of Italian towns associated with her for several hundred years, but Roman citizens had been divided among themselves in a way that would have been unthinkable in the period of the Punic wars. One would like to know the personal political convictions of the opposing leaders, Marius and Sulla. The probability is that neither of them looked much farther ahead than does a representative of “boss” rule in America, who would be very much surprised if asked whether he would like to see the principles of the political ring incorporated frankly and definitely in the Constitution of the United States. It is certain that after the death of Sulla, though personal rule had come to an end, there was no effort made to prevent its re-emergence. The question was rather--from what quarter it would emerge. The common opinion was that the popular general, Pompeius, distinguished by his victories in the East, would come to take the place left vacant by Sulla’s death. He had none of the antipathetic personal qualities of the late dictator, therefore he was regarded as a man of principle, and accordingly, fitted to supply the personal element in Roman administration which most people seem to have felt was needed.