Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
The ruling nation became a city rabble, the vices of which were but little tempered by the fitful intervention of the enfranchised communities of Italy. Of this rabble, political adventurers bought the consulships, which led to the government of provinces, and wrung out of the unhappy provincials the purchase money and a fortune for themselves besides.
We find them representing us in the first-class missions abroad, in the second-class and in the third-class; and there not being high places enough of this kind, that the world may know the Confederacy has been recognized fully by our people since its downfall, those who were in high positions under it now take to the Consulships and are accepting them as rapidly as can well be done.
No one either on the aristocratic or the democratic side any longer thought of the victorious general on occasion of filling up the magistracies; the hero of six consulships could not even venture to become a candidate in 656 for the censorship.
With these exceptions, the administration fell back into its old condition. The tribunes ceased to agitate. The consulships and the praetorships fell to the candidates whom the Senate supported. Whether the oligarchy had learnt any lessons of caution from the brief political earthquake which had shaken but not overthrown them remained to be seen.
Was this the master you chose? Could you bring your tongue to give him the name of Augustus? Could you stoop to beg consulships and triumphs from him? Oh, shame to virtue! Oh, degeneracy of Rome! To what infamy are her sons, her noblest sons, fallen. The thought of it pains me more than the wound that I died of; it stabs my soul. Messalla. Moderate, Cato, the vehemence of your indignation.
Suetonius enumerates, among their ancestral honours, twenty-eight Consulships, five Dictators, seven Censorial commissions, and seven triumphs: their cognomen of Nero, he says, means in the Sabine tongue "vigorous and bold," fortis et strenuus; and the long history of the Claudian House does not belie their gallant name.
Moreover, Augustus, as supports to his domination, raised his sister's son, Claudius Marcellus, a mere youth, to the dignity of pontiff and curule ædile; aggrandized by two successive consulships Marcus Agrippa, a man meanly born, but an accomplished soldier, and the companion of his victories; and soon, on the death of Marcellus, chose him for his son-in-law.
But they made a less vigorous opposition, as being now accustomed to suffer defeat in such kind of disputes; and they saw their adversaries, not, as formerly, grasping at that which they could scarcely hope to reach, the higher honours; but already in possession of all those advantages, on the uncertain prospect of which they had maintained the contest, manifold consulships, censorships, and triumphs.
The conference, emboldened by terror, marches in a body into the little room, and surrounds the calmly insane Lieutenant-general of the forces; it would be ill-natured to say that visions of lost railroad commissionerships, lost consulships, lost postmasterships, yes, of lost senatorships, were in these loyal heads at this crucial time. Mr.
Pompeius and Crassus were moreover promised a second consulship for the next year before they departed for their governorships, while Caesar kept it open to himself to administer the supreme magistracy a second time after the termination of his governorship in 706, when the ten years' interval legally requisite between two consulships should have in his case elapsed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking