The restoration

About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable temple, which had been erected by the kings, dedicated by the youthful republic, and spared by the storms of five hundred years—the temple of the Roman Jupiter in the Capitol—perished in the flames. It was no augury, but it waa an image of the state of the Roman constitution. That, too, lay in ruins and needed reconstruction. The revolution was no doubt vanquished, but the victory was far from implying, as a matter of course, the restoration of the old government. The mass of the aristocracy certainly was of opinion that now, after the death of the two revolutionary consuls, it would be sufficient to make arrangements for the ordinary supplemental election and to leave it to the senate to take such steps as should seem further requisite for the rewarding of the victorious army, for the punishment of the most guilty revolutionists, and perhaps also for the prevention of similar outbreaks. But Sulla, in whose hands the victory had concentrated for the moment all power, formed a more correct judgment of things and of men. The aristocracy of Rome in its best epoch had not risen above an adherence—partly noble and partly narrow—to traditional forms. How could the clumsy collegiate government of this period be expected to carry out with energy and thoroughness a comprehensive reform of the state?