Although the public offices were systematically connected, yet they were not so graded and regulated that the candidate who successfully attained the lowest could look forward to secure preferment. Popular favor, which determined the highest honors, had then to be acquired in a manner not different from that of every other age. The term of office was usually but one year; to have once exercised its functions was of almost greater importance than to be enjoying actual possession, for the honor remained, and influence could be increased by successive terms only in exceptional instances. Direct compensation was awarded only to the inferior officials. The history of the Roman constitution is the history of Rome itself; its consideration lies outside our domain.
prtor was charged with the administration of the law, especially in civil matters. He was aided by a large number of judges, who were selected at first from the senators, afterward also from the knights, and who kept the knowledge of the rules and complicated forms of law-proceedings a secret among themselves. The komans pos sessed the rudiments of our jury system, for there were judges who passed upon the facts of a case, and others who pronounced the verdict or sen tence. Private offences could be prosecuted only by the aggrieved party, but any citizen might be the prosecutor in state offences. Grave crimes were tried by the Senate or by the comitia of the people. A citizen could be condemned to death only by the voice of the community, and even during the balloting he was allowed the alternative of voluntary exile. The condition of most of the provinces in regard to justice was for the most part lamentable.' males, with the exception of the lowest class, were subject to military service from the seventeenth to the forty-sixth year, and they could be freed from it during that period only after having participated in sixteen campaigns on foot or in ten as horsemen. Under the Republic, however, wars were so frequent that exemption was soon earned. Only veterans of tell campaigns were eligible to the magistracy. Led over a large portion of the world by military service, the Roman must have unconsciously acquired a wide amount of observation, and its general extension could not but raise the capacity for intellectual culture. Nev ertheless, the practical tendencies of the people remained predominant.
Agriculture, Trade, and products of the soil furnished the means of subsistence. By the Claudian law the patricians were for bidden to engage in mercantile pursuits; they were only permitted to advance money for the enterprises of others. Nevertheless, the Roman navy protected the commerce of subjugated nations.
practical sense of the Romans was especially apparent in their religion. In the Greek view the gods, though placed above man, were yet his companions in a beneficent scheme of existence as well as subjects for the exercise of his imaginative faculty; to the Roman his gods were alien powers, whom lie acknowledged as such because he conceived of man also primarily as a power, and whose favor he wished to gain because he needed their assistance. He was deeply religious because his sense of dependence was great; but the main element of his character was his decisive will. Without imagining that belief in supernatural powers could render him independent of external circumstances, he accepted it in order to gain his definite ends. Therefore he concerned himself only about the substance; the forms were indifferent, and he freely borrowed them from others when lie himself was unable to create them.
Mythology and old Latin mythology is an object of purely antiquarian research.' Even as early as the times of the kings the Greek Olympus began to migrate into Latium and to transform itself into a system devoid of myths. Except the double-faced Janus (who was only too frequently a mere allegory), the Romans can scarcely show a national deity. But they adopted the gods of other countries besides Greece, and their tendency to do so continually became stronger. Some times when besieging a city they venerated its gods in order to will them for allies. They were prone to find divine interposition in every chance occurrence, and superstition perhaps nowhere played a greater part than among them. Their most important enterprises were made dependent upon the flight of birds, the feeding of chickens, and similar auguries. Even during the period of their highest culture they made no attempt to free themselves from such superstitions.
public affairs, which were closely connected with re ligion, the Roman priests occupied a far different position from those of Greece, although here too they were neither an hereditary caste nor a dis tinct class. Their office was a public position, which was to be obtained like other public employments or which was legally associated with some of the higher magistracies. Only a few priests, such as the augurs and flamens, held office for life. The supervision of the entire worship was exercised by the pontiffs under the supremacy of their superior, the pon tifex maximus, who always occupied an influential position. It was the duty of the augurs to observe the flight of birds, the feeding of the sacred chickens, and the occurrence of thunder and lightning, from all of which the result of any important state affair was predicted.