This became so continued that a foreign war was at times regarded as a blessing, because it concentrated the energies of the State, which had been split and used by the two sections--by each against the other.

It is probably the case that the invasion of the Gauls in earlier days, and, later on, the second Punic war, threatening as they were in their incidents to the power of Rome, provided the Republic with that vitality which kept it so long in existence.

Then came Marius, dominant on one side as a tribune of the people, and Sylla, as aristocrat on the other, and the civil wars between them, in which, as one prevailed or the other, Rome was mastered.

How Marius died, and Sylla reigned for three bloody, fatal years, is outside the scope of our purpose--except in this, that Cicero saw Sylla's proscriptions, and made his first essay into public life hot with anger at the Dictator's tyranny.
It occurs to us as we read the history of Rome, beginning with the early Consuls and going to the death of Caesar and of Cicero, and the accomplished despotism of Augustus, that the Republic could not have been saved by any efforts, and was in truth not worth the saving.

We are apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the Roman form of government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies.