Neither the assembly nor the legions
obeyed the Senate, for the corrupt nobles had lost all moral
authority, so that there was left but one real power--the army; there
were no men of influence beside the generals, and the generals had no
longer any desire to obey. The government by the Senate, now no longer
practicable, gave place to the government of the general.
=The Civil Wars.=--The revolution was inevitable, but it did not come
at one stroke; it required more than a hundred years to accomplish it.
The Senate resisted, but too weak itself to govern, it was strong
enough to prevent domination by another power. The generals fought
among themselves to see who should remain master. For a century the
Romans and their subjects lived in the midst of riot and civil war.
=The Gracchi.=--The first civil discord that blazed up in Rome was the
contest of the Gracchi against the Senate. The two brothers, Tiberius
and Gaius Gracchus, were of one of the noblest families of Rome, but
both endeavored to take the government from the nobles who formed the
Senate by making themselves tribunes of the plebs.
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