The capitalist party might have furnished a support, but it was injured in the most sensitive point by the law as to debt.

The true mainstay of the government was--wholly without any cooperation on its part--the new burgesses; their assistance was acquiesced in, but nothing was done to regulate the strange position of the Samnites, who were now nominally Roman citizens, but evidently regarded their country's independence as practically the real object and prize of the struggle and remained in arms to defend it against all and sundry.

Illustrious senators were struck down like mad dogs; but not the smallest step was taken to reorganize the senate in the interest of the government, or even permanently to terrify it; so that the government was by no means sure of its aid.

Gaius Gracchus had not understood the fall of the oligarchy as implying that the new master might conduct himself on his self-created throne, as legitimate cipher-kings think proper to do.

But this Cinna had been elevated to power not by his will, but by pure accident; was there any wonder that he remained where the storm-wave of revolution had washed him up, till a second wave came to sweep him away again?
Cinna and Sulla Italy and the Provinces in Favour of the Government The same union of the mightiest plenitude of power with the most utter impotence and incapacity in those who held it, was apparent in the warfare waged by the revolutionary government against the oligarchy--a warfare on which withal its existence primarily depended.