[SunkenCiv]

I think any sane person would rather live under the rule of two elected Consuls and the Senate.

The unelected Senate was made up entirely of people who literally owned nearly all the land in Italy, and that was the source of their great wealth and power. Half or (often) more of the people living under the so-called Roman Republic were slaves, most of whom were owned by the same patrician families who owned all the land.

The Senators regarded everyone else -- slaves, freedmen, and plain citizens -- as inferiors to be ruled by the great and glorious patrician families. I don't call wanting to live under an assembly of despots and a couple of window-dressing Consuls a form of sanity, I call it living in a fantasy world to equate what the "Roman Republic" was to what we have due to the Framers. I think any sane person would prefer to live here and now.

[allmendream]

I thought implicit in that statement, considering the two systems we were comparing, was that “rather” referred to the Imperial system. Of course our system is preferable to any other ever devised by men.

In other words my statement was meant to be read as... “I think any sane person would rather live under the rule of two elected Consuls and the Senate than the absolute rule for life of an Emperor”.

The same social stratification existed under the Emperor that existed under the Consuls. The Emperor played lip service to the masses because they, and the Praetorian Guard, usually determined the length of his reign. So rather than being accountable to an electorate like the Consuls, he was accountable to the mob. As witnessed by the “Bread and Circuses”, accountability to the mob was a step down from accountability to those who have a financial stake in the order and stability of the Empire.