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39That this struggle proved tremendous and surpassed all previous civil conflicts of the Romans would be naturally surmised,—not that it was greater than they in either the number of the combatants or as regards their valour, since far larger masses and braver men than they had fought on many fields, but because now as never before liberty and popular government were the issues of the struggle. For though they again came to blows with one another just as they had done previously, 2yet these later struggles were for the purpose of finding out what master they should obey, whereas on the present occasion the one side was trying to lead them to autocracy, the other side to self-government. Hence the people never attained again to absolute freedom of speech, even though vanquished by no foreign nation 3(the subject and the allied forces then present with them were of course merely a kind of complement of the citizen army); but the people at one and the same time triumphed over and were vanquished by themselves, defeated themselves and were defeated, and consequently they exhausted the democratic element and strengthened the monarchical. 4And yet I do not say that it was not beneficial for the people to be defeated at that time—what else, indeed, can one say regarding the contestants on both sides than that the vanquished were Romans and that the victor was Caesar!—for they were no longer capable of maintaining harmony in the established form of government. 5It is, of course, impossible for an unadulterated democracy that has grown to so proud an empire to exercise moderation; and so they would later on have undertaken many similar conflicts one after another, and some day would certainly have been either enslaved or ruined.
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