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This Book List Sectory 05
Page 08
The Consuls now saw that it would be necessary to have recourse to force; but they had no military ability, and their attacks were repulsed with great loss. The younger Scipio Africanus, who was then serving in the army as military tribune, displayed great bravery and military skill, and, on one occasion, saved the army from destruction. Still no permanent success was gained, and Scipio returned to Rome, accompanied by the prayers of the soldiers that he would come back as their commander. In the following year (B.C. 148) the new Consul L. Calpurnius Piso was even less successful than his predecessors. The soldiers became discontented; the Roman Senate and people, who had anticipated an easy conquest, were indignant at their disappointment, and all eyes were turned to Scipio. Accordingly, when he became a candidate for the aedileship for the ensuing year (B.C. 147), he was unanimously elected Consul, though he was only thirty-seven years old, and had not, therefore, attained the legal age for the office.
Charles spent most of his time, at some periods of his reign, in idle amusements, lounging about his palace, playing at tennis in the tennis court like a boy, and then weighing himself afterward to see how much he was gaining. In the afternoons and evenings he would loiter in the rooms of his favorites while they were finishing their dressing, gamble at cards, and often would get very much intoxicated at wild midnight carousals. He would ramble in the mall and in the parks, and feed the aquatic birds upon the ponds there, day after day, with all the interest and pleasure of a truant schoolboy. He roamed about thus in the most free and careless manner, and accosted people far beneath him in rank in what was considered a undignified way for a king.
The earlier history of the Roman constitution has been already related. We have seen how, after a long struggle, the Plebeians acquired complete political equality with the Patricians. In the Second Punic War, the antagonism between the two orders had almost disappeared, and the only mark of separation between them in political matters was the regulation that, of the two Consuls and two Censors, one must be a Patrician and the other a Plebeian. Even this fell into disuse upon the rise of the new Nobility, of which we shall speak in the next chapter. The Patricians gradually dwindled away, and it became the custom to elect both Consuls and Censors from the Plebeians.
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