Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
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.
