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The oligarchy had by its corrupt incapacity made a tyranny inevitable. They could make choice of masters, but a master they must have. Many were the proud Fabii, Claudii, and Valerii present that night men whose lines of curule ancestors were as long as the duration of the Republic who ground their teeth with shame and inward rage the very moment they cried, "Salve, Magne!"
Her name and her person became popular even among the common people of Rome, to whom the name of the Julii was more sympathetic than that of the Claudii, which was borne by the sons of Livia. The combined popularity of Augustus and of Agrippa was reflected in her.
Even in the first Punic war an instance occurred in which the consul himself made an open jest of consulting the auspices before battle a consul, it is true, belonging to the peculiar clan of the Claudii, which alike in good and evil was ahead of its age.
The earlier admission of the Tities among the Ramnians does not entitle us to class the community among mongrel peoples any more than does that subsequent reception of the Claudii among the Romans.
He says that "the same Josephus is, nevertheless, guilty of an evident mistake when he asserts that Cumanus was convicted in Rome, and that Claudius thence sent to Judaea the brother of his freedman Pallas, Felix; for Felix was sent along with Cumanus to that province, which was so divided between them, that Felix ruled Samaria, but Cumanus the remainder of the province": "Sed patentis erroris nihilominus idem Josephus arguitur, dum ait esse damnatum Romae Cumanum ac inde Claudium Felicem Pallantis liberti Claudii Augusti germanum missum esse in Judaeam.
So ended that exciting day, or rather that night. It was Cleopatra who with her own hands laid the bandages on Cornelia's wounded shoulder, but the hurt was not serious; only, as Drusus laughingly assured her, it was an honourable scar, as became the descendant of so many fighting Claudii and Cornelii.
Power was in the hands of nobles, whether their ancestors were patricians or plebeians, although in the early ages of the Republic they were mostly patricians by birth. But with the growth of Rome new families that were not descended from the ancient tribes became prominent, like the Claudii, the Julii, and the Servilii, and were incorporated with the nobility.
And who was this man? Although no nobility, no honours, no deserts should open to any man the road to domination, yet still the Claudii and Cassii, by reason of the consulates, the decemvirates, the honours of their own and those of their ancestors, and from the splendour of their families, had raised their aspiring minds to heights to which it was impious to raise them: that Spurius Mælius, to whom a tribuneship of the commons should rather be an object of wishes than of hope, a wealthy corn-merchant, had conceived the hope to purchase the liberty of his countrymen for two pounds of corn; had supposed that a people victorious over all their neighbours could be cajoled into servitude by throwing them a morsel of food; so that a person whom the state could scarcely digest as a senator, it should tolerate as king, possessing the ensigns and authority of Romulus their founder, who had descended from and had returned to the gods.
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