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reported to have said (Cicero, de rep. ii, 1, 2), ‘is that the latter almost always had their laws and institutions from one legislator. But our Republic was not made by the genius of one man, but of many, nor in the life of one, but through many centuries and generations.’ Polybius writes (vi, 10, 13) in the same strain that the Romans did not achieve their constitution ‘by mere thinking, but after many struggles and difficulties, always choosing the best course after actual experience of misfortune’.
    There had been three main tendencies at work in the early Republic: the struggle for political equalization, the devolution of power among an increasing number of magistrates, and the extension of the power of the Senate. Amid the constant clash of interests three great organs of the state had been evolved: the magistrates, the Senate and the assemblies. That they worked in harmony was a triumph of compromise and common sense. We must next consider them separately. At the fall of the monarchy the king’s power had passed mainly to the two consuls (or praetors) who had been forced to share it in the course of time with an increasing number of magistrates. These had been created partly in a vain attempt by the patricians to retain a monoploy of government, partly because the growing needs of an expanding state necessitated the sharing of responsibility. The most characteristic feature of the magistracy is perhaps that it was simply an honos : no salary was paid to an official. This determined its nature, for only the well-to-do propertied classes could attain to it. The plebeians might win the right of entry into the patrician preserves, but only their richer representatives could go in. In theory the magistrates were elected by the whole citizen body, but this electorate was so scattered that the elections were often easily manipulated in favour of a given class; as early as 358 a tribune, C. Poetelius, tried to regulate electioneering propaganda outside Rome (Livy, vii, 15, 12). Thus there had grown up the new nobility of rich landowners who handed down from generation to generation the tradition of office within their own families, and it became more difficult for a novus homo who belonged to a family outside the governing circle to win his way to a magistracy. Hence a steady level of efficiency was maintained, but few men of outstanding genius were produced. The early Roman magistrates seem types rather than individuals.
    A remarkable feature of the magistracy is the fewness of the offices. Each year there were two consuls, primarily for military affairs, one praetor forjurisdiction, two quaestors for the Treasury and two to accompany the consuls, two curule and two plebeian aediles for policing the city; there were ten plebeian tribunes who at first tended to hinder rather than assist the work of government but who were later worked into the scheme; there were decemviri stlitibus iudicandis , later at any rate judges in suits which involved liberty and citizenship; at intervals two censors were appointed to revise the list of citizens and of senators, to supervise public behaviour and to let out state contracts; finally, in an emergency a dictator might be appointed. Thus the higher administrative magistrates, excluding the tribunes, numbered only eleven or at the most fourteen. They were assisted sometimes by a board of technical advisers of senatorial rank ( consilium ), and by numerous subordinates, such as lictors, clerks ( scribae ), messengers ( viatores ) and heralds ( praecones ). Later other appointments were made: the four prefects ( quattuorviri ) to whom the praetors delegated the administration of justice in Campania in 318; the police officers, triumviri capitales , appointed about 290, who exercised a summary jurisdiction over petty offenders; and the duoviri navales chosen by popular election in 311. But a more important method of dealing with the paucity of magistrates than that of allowing them to