Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI. THE BEGINNING OF THE REPUBLIC, AND THE STRUGGLE FOB PLEBEIAN BIGHTS. The Roman monarchy passed away, and in its place was established a government which we are in the habit of calling republican. This change is expressed by Livy in the opening words of his second book: From this point it is the history of a free Roman people in peace and war, with annual magistrates and the sovereign powers of law stronger than the sovereign powers of individuals, that I am going to narrate. But the origin of this new order is shrouded in obscurity, which can hardly be said to be relieved by the fond legends which cluster found the name of Brutus. It is true that the ingenuity of the pontifical college, which kept the Fasti, invented the names of magistrates for these early years, and the ballads of border forays were worked up into elaborate stories of heroic deeds by the chroniclers of the great families; but these are not materials out of which history can be made: they are at best only tales from which fragments of historic truth may be extracted. Some members of the patrician families, smarting under the unbridled power of the king, raised a successful revolt against him. Foremost in the movement was the hero?a historic personage we may well believe?L. Junius Brutus. He, together with a member of the regal family, L. Tarquinius Collatinus, undertook the government for a year. These were the first consuls, or, as they were at that time called, prcetors.1 To Brutus tradition attributed the essentially Roman ideas which underlie the new magistracy. 1 Prw-itur, the leader primarily of the host. Bod B. 00 I.. Junius Brutus. 13 An annual office, and a power divided between two mutually independent colleagues, seemed the best way of combining freedom for the great …
