Once free of Etruscan domination, the Romans developed a Republican form. of government which lasted until the first century BC, and provided important continuity for Roman institutions. The motto 'S.P.Q.R.'—Senatus Populusgue Romanus, 'The Roman Senate and People' reflected the philosophy of the early Roman political and social order and remained the watchword of Roman society until Imperial times. It meant that sovereignty rested in the people themselves, and not in any particular governmental form. Yet in many ways the Roman Republic functioned as a democracy. Decisions affecting society were made at a series of assemblies which all citizens attended to express their will. The Senate, on the other hand, conducted the business of government including the passage of legislation and the supervision of elected magistrates. Over the centuries the greatest issues affecting Roman society were played out as dramas created by tensions between people and Senate. The Senate itself was a hereditary institution comprising an assembly of heads, patres of old patrician families and later wealthy members of the citizenry-plebs. The three hundred members therefore represented old and new money, power, and social interest. It was a self-renewing oligarchy. The two most important officers who ruled the state were the consuls, elected by the representative assemblies for one-year terms, at the end of which they became members of the Senate. In Rome the rich ruled via the Senate. The general citizenry were little more than peasants. By the third century BC the division between aristocrat and peasant had widened appreciably-the former growing in riches and the latter sinking further and further into poverty. Yet the constitutional framework of the Republic held the small Roman social order together, warding off revolution, permitting change, and providing the body politic with reasonably well-trained leaders who knew how, above all else, to keep the Republic functioning and alive. It was, in fact, the internal stability of the Republic which made expansion possible, bringing about the next phase of Roman history. Roman expansion was based on military conquest. Very little commerce and industry existed in Rome, unlike Athens, and the quality of life in Rome came to depend directly upon the wealth of conquered regions brought back to Rome as spoils of military victory. By the middle of the second century BC Rome had conquered Carthage in North Africa and Corinth in Asia Minor, and had thus assumed a position of political dominance in the Hellenistic world. The internationalization of culture, evident in Hellenic times, increased further under the Romans. Later, Rome would extend its control throughout Europe and eventually to the British Isles. What kind of social form. immediately followed the Roman Republic Age?