We have already spoken of the shape which the government of the subjects and the external policy of Rome assumed in their hands.
In internal affairs they were, if possible, still more disposed to let the ship drive before the wind: if we understand by internal government more than the transaction of current business, there was at this period no government in Rome at all.

The single leading thought of the governing corporation was the maintenance and, if possible, the increase of their usurped privileges.

It was not the state that had a title to get the right and best man for its supreme magistracy; but every member of the coterie had an inborn title to the highest office of the state--a title not to be prejudiced either by the unfair rivalry of men of his own class or by the encroachments of the excluded.

Accordingly the clique proposed to itself, as its most important political aim, the restriction of re-election to the consulship and the exclusion of "new men"; and in fact it succeeded in obtaining the legal prohibition of the former about 603,( 1) and in sufficing with a government of aristocratic nobodies.

Even the inaction of the government in its outward relations was doubtless connected with this policy of the nobility, exclusive towards commoners, and distrustful towards the individual members of their own order.