nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure primarily on the government of the restoration. A similar misrule had indeed always come along with the re-establishment of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that of Marius and Saturninus; yet never before had it shown such violence and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged so corrupt and pernicious. But, when a government cannot govern, it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also the right to overthrow it. It is, no doubt, unhappily true that an incapable and flagitious government may for a long period trample under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are found who are able and willing to wield against that government the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolution which is in such a case legitimate. But if the game attempted with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one and may be played perhaps for a long time without molestation, it is a treacherous game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one then blames the axe, if it is laid to the root of the tree that bears such fruits. For the Roman oligarchy this time had now come. The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan constitution and of the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.
CHAPTER III The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius
Continued Subsistence of the Sullan Constitution
The Sullan constitution still stood unshaken. The assault, which Lepidus and Sertorius had ventured to make on it, had been repulsed with little loss. The government had neglected, it is true, to finish the half-completed building in the energetic spirit of its author. It is characteristic of the government, that it neither distributed the lands