“ He aspired not only to unite under his rule the Greek communities of Italy and Sicily, but to overthrow the great Phoenician state of Carthage—the natural enemy of Greeks in the West, as Persia had been in the East. Of Rome it is clear that he knew little or nothing; the task of ridding the Greek seaports of their barbarian foes he no doubt regarded as an easy one; and the splendid force he brought with him was intended rather for the conquest of the West than for the preliminary work of chastising a few Italian tribes, or securing the submission of the unwarlike Italian Greeks. ”

“ Every pope aggrandized his own kindred and friends, and these were the natural and often open adversaries of the next pontiff and his favourites. Thus the Roman nobility was powerful, divided, restless and turbulent; it was continually plotting against the pope, threatening not only his power, but even his life; it continually appealed to the people for assistance, stirred the militia to revolt and rendered government an impossibility. ”

“ Of all men, too, Sulla had the best reason to appreciate the dangers to be feared from the growing independence of governors and generals in the provinces, and from the transformation of the old civic militia into a group of professional armies, devoted only to a successful leader, and with the weakest possible sense of allegiance to the state. He had himself, as proconsul of Asia, contemptuously and successfully defied the home government, and he, more than any other Roman general, had taught his soldiers to look only to their leader, and to think only of booty. ”

“ The whole structure of Roman Accentuation of class distinctions. society was altered, and the equality and homogeneity which had once been its chief characteristics were destroyed. The Roman nobles had not merely ceased, as in old days, to till their own farms; they had found a means of enriching themselves beyond the dreams of avarice, and when they returned from the government of a province it was to build sumptuous villas, filled with the spoils of Greece and Asia, to surround themselves with troops of slaves and dependents, and to live rather as princes than as citizens of a republic. ”

“ The chief dangers for Carthage lay obviously in the jealousy exhibited at home of her officers abroad, in the difficulty of controlling her mercenary troops, and in the ever-present possibility of disaffection among her subjects in Libya—dangers which even the genius of Hannibal failed finally to surmount. Rome, on the other hand, was strong in the public spirit of her citizens, the fidelity of her allies, the valour and discipline of her legions. ”

“ The concentration in Caesar's hands of all authority outside Rome completely and finally severed all real connexion between the old institutions of the Republic of Rome and the government of the Roman Empire. But the institutions of the Republic not merely became, what they had originally been, the local institutions of the city of Rome; they were also subordinated even within these narrow limits to the paramount authority of the man who held in his hands the army and the provinces. ”

“ For this end we conquered and destroyed the strongholds of the barons who, together with the pope and the Normans, sought to resist us. These are now attacking us on all sides. Haste to Rome, the capital of the world, thus to establish thy imperial sway over the Italian and German lands. ”

“ But the rule of Rome over Italy, like her wider rule over the Mediterranean coasts, was not an absolute dominion over conquered subjects. It was in form at least a confederacy under Roman protection and guidance; and the Italians, like the provincials, were not the subjects, but the “allies and friends” of the Roman people. [134] In the treatment of these allies Rome consistently followed the maxim, divide et impera. In every possible way she strove to isolate them from each other, while binding them closely to herself. ”

“ The history of municipal freedom in Italy lay in this struggle. But the infiltration of Teutonic and feudal elements broke up the ancient aristocracy of Rome, gave it a special character and left it at the mercy of the people. Then the popes, by the bestowal of lucrative offices, rich benefices and vast estates, and, above all, by raising many nobles to the purple, introduced new blood into the Roman aristocracy, and endued it with increasing strength and vitality. ”

“ The kings increase in, power and surround themselves with new splendour. Abroad, too, Rome suddenly appears as at powerful state ruling far and wide over southern Etruria and Latium. These startling changes are, moreover, ascribed to kings of alien descent, who one and all ascend the throne in the teeth of established constitutional forms. ”

“ The art of rhetoric, which was studied through the medium of Greek treatises and Greek models, furnished the Roman noble with weapons of attack and defence of which he was not slow to avail himself in the forum and the senate-house. In the science of money-making, which had been elaborated under the Hellenistic monarchies, the Roman capitalists proved apt pupils of their Greek teachers. Among the lower classes, contact with foreign slaves and freedmen, with foreign worships and foreign vices, produced a love of novelty which no legislation could check. ”

“ But a friendly and independent Greece would be at once a check on Macedon, a barrier against aggression from the East, and a promising field for Roman commerce. Nor while liberating the Greeks did Rome abstain from such arrangements as seemed necessary to secure the predominance of her own influence. In the Peloponnese, for instance, the Achaeans were rewarded by considerable accessions of territory; and it is possible that the Greek states, as allies of Rome, were expected to refrain from war upon each other without her consent. ”

“ Their conquest of a large portion of Italy was accompanied by the harshest oppression. They abolished all ancient laws and institutions, and not only seized a third of the land, but reduced the inhabitants almost to slavery. But, in the unsubdued parts of the country—namely, in Ravenna, Rome and the maritime cities—a very different state of things prevailed. The necessity for self-defence and the distance of the empire, now too worn out to render any assistance, compelled the inhabitants to depend solely on their own strength. ”

“ All real and effective power was on the side of brute force, and the Goths alone bore arms. In every province they had their comites, or heads of the army, who had judicial power over their countrymen, especially in criminal cases. Here, then, was a combination of civil and military jurisdiction altogether contrary to Roman ideas. Nor can it be denied that the comites, as chiefs of the armed force, necessarily exerted a direct or indirect influence on the civil and administrative power of the provinces, and especially upon the collection of the imposts. ”

“ The senate, though forced year after year to listen to the mutual recriminations and complaints of rival communities and factions, contented itself as a rule with intervening just enough to remind the Greeks that their freedom was limited by its own paramount authority, and to prevent any single state or confederacy from raising itself too far above the level of general weakness which it was the interest of Rome to maintain. ”

“ The people, being anxious to show their intention of respecting the papal authority, had dispatched to Avignon as ambassador of the republic, in 1343, a man destined to make much noise in the world. This was Cola di Rienzi, son of a Roman innkeeper, a notary, and an impassioned student of the Bible, the fathers, Livy, Seneca, Cicero, and Valerius Maximus. Thoroughly imbued with a half pagan, half Christian spirit, he believed that he had a divinely inspired mission to revive the ancient glories of Rome. ”

“ Doubtless the craving for amusement—especially for the shows of the amphitheatre and the chariot-races of the circus—infected the idle masses of the populace in Rome and the larger towns, and was fostered by the policy of despotism, which always aims at securing cheap popularity with the proletariat; but the tendency of the time, not only in the higher ranks, but also amongst humbler folk, was towards a broader humanity and a more serious view of life and its problems. ”

“ Both the western and eastern Mediterranean now acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome, but her relations with the two were from the first different. The West fell to her as the prize of victory over Carthage, and, the Carthaginian power broken, there was no hindrance to the immediate establishment in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and finally in Africa, of direct Roman rule. To the majority, moreover, of her western subjects she brought a civilization as well as a government of a higher type than any before known to them. ”

“ Notwithstanding the praise lavished on Theodoric, the kingdom founded by him in Italy had no solid basis. It was composed of two nations differing in race and traditions and even in religion, since the Goths were Arians and the Romans Catholics. The latter were sunk in degeneracy and corruption; their institutions were old and decrepit. It was necessary to infuse new life into the worn-out body. This was difficult, perhaps impossible; and at any rate Theodoric never attempted the task. Little wonder then if the Gothic kingdom succumbed to the Byzantine armies from Constantinople. ”

“ But Rome looked naturally westward rather than eastward. The western coasts of the peninsula were the most fertile and populous and wealthy; and it was in this direction that the natural openings for Italian commerce were to be found. It was, however, precisely on this side that Rome had serious ground for anxiety. Carthage was now at the height of her power. Her outposts were threateningly near to Italy in Sardinia and in Sicily, while her fleets swept the seas and jealously guarded for the benefit of Carthage alone the hidden treasures of the West. ”

“ He endeavoured to bring to justice, not only the ringleaders in Sulla's bloody work of proscription, but even the murderers of Saturninus, and vehemently pleaded the cause of the children of the proscribed. While thus carrying on in genuine Roman fashion the feud of his family, he attracted the sympathies of the Italians by his efforts to procure the Roman franchise for the Latin communities beyond the Po, and won the affections of the populace in Rome and its immediate neighbourhood by the splendour of the 689. ”

“ A Roman element had penetrated into the army, which was already possessed of considerable political importance. The prefect of Rome loses authority and seems almost a nullity compared with the magister militum. Hardly anything is heard of the senate. “Quia enim Senatus deest, populus interiit,” exclaims Gregory in a moment of despair. The popes now make common cause with the people against the Lombards on the one hand and the emperor on the other. But they avoid an absolute rupture with the empire, lest they should have to face the Lombard power without any prospect of help. ”

“ Even the pope, willingly or unwillingly, accorded his approval to Rienzi's deeds. The provincial cities did homage to Rome and her tribune, and almost all the rest of Italy gave him its enthusiastic adherence. The ancient sovereign people seemed on the point of resuscitation. And others besides the multitude were fascinated and carried off their feet. Great men like Petrarch were transported with joy. The poet lauded Cola di Rienzi as a sublime and supernatural being, the greatest of ancient and modern men. ”

“ The republican institutions, with the partial exception of the senate, lose all semblance of authority outside Rome, and even as the municipal institutions of the chief city of the empire they retain but little actual power. The real government even of Rome passes gradually into the hands of imperial prefects and commissioners, and the old magistracies become merely decorations which the emperor bestows at his pleasure. ”