Thus, the characteristic fact of the Roman institutions was to form men apt for all functions. As long as on a narrow theatre the ruling class had the wisdom to limit its ambition to promoting the veritable interests of their country, as the seduction of riches and unbounded power did not come to exalt it beyond measure, the aristocratic system maintained itself with all its advantages, and overruled the instability of institutions. It alone, indeed, was capable of supporting long, without succumbing, a _régime_ in which the direction of the State and the command of the armies passed annually into different hands, and depended upon elections the element of which is ever fickle. Besides, the laws gave rise to antagonisms more calculated to cause anarchy than to consolidate true liberty. Let us examine, in these last relations, the constitution of the Republic.
[Sidenote: Institutions of the Republic.]
II. The two consuls were originally generals, judges, and administrators; equal in powers, they were often in disagreement, either in the Forum,[93] or on the field of battle.[94] Their dissensions were repeated many times until the consulate of Cæsar and Bibulus; and they were liable to become the more dangerous as the decision of one consul was annulled by the opposition of his colleague. On the other hand, the short duration of their magistracy constrained them either to hurry a battle in order to rob their successor of the glory,[95] or to interrupt a campaign in order to proceed to Rome to hold the comitia. The defeats of the Trebia and Cannæ, with that of Servilius Cæpio by the Cimbri,[96] were fatal examples of the want of unity in the direction of war.
In order to lessen the evil effects of a simultaneous exercise of their prerogatives, the consuls agreed to take in campaign the command alternately day by day, and at Rome each to have the fasces during a month; but this innovation had also vexatious consequences.[97] It was even thought necessary, nine years after the fall of the kings, to have recourse to the dictatorship; and this absolute authority, limited to six months, that is, to the longest duration of a campaign, only remedied temporarily, and under extraordinary circumstances, the want of power concentrated in a single individual.