Marquardt considered that its rule of conduct was general dishonesty.

In Rome we find the highest development of the evils which accompany the acquisition of national wealth by war, and the lowest development of those blessings which grow out of the devotion of the mass of the people to productive toil. Even after the Romans had conquered and occupied and plundered all the countries from the Euphrates to the Irish Sea, and after they had had abundant opportunity to become familiar with all the knowledge of their subjects, they still continued to be a coarse and empty-minded people, incapable of appreciating the Greek literature and arts, which they used mainly as cloaks, to hide the detestable features of their gross sensuality. Early in their career, free labor was repressed among them by exhausting warfare, slaves became very numerous. The nobles and wealthy plebeians devoted themselves to money lending, government contracts, and trade; and in the last century of the republic, the rich men had become a band of robbers who held the offices, plundered the provinces, and the subject cities in alliance. with the pauper multitude of the Imperial City, whom they bribed with free bread and free games.*

SEC. 467. Success.-It may seem singular that, with such a detestable government, the republic had succeeded in conquering nearly all of the known world. But her government did not become so corrupt until she had destroyed her most formidable enemies. In her earlier centuries her people were organized in clans, each of which preserved order within its own limits; the population of the metropolis was not very large; the army was composed of property holders, who were interested in maintaining a good administration; and the military dis

cipline was strict. Notwithstanding serious abuses at home, the wisdom of the senate and the expansiveness of the citizenship gave Rome dominion abroad.

It is impossible to study the history of the Romans without being greatly impressed by their undaunted courage; by their admirable military discipline; by the consistency of their foreign policy; by their unparalleled series of victories; by their successive grants of citizenship to the freemen of all their conquered provinces; by their admirable systems of civil law and of city government; and by the vast influence which they have exerted and continue to exert on the languages, literature, and government of modern times.

Early in her career, Rome adopted the policy of using her neighboring states to destroy one another. Her maxim was to divide and conquer. Fortunately for her, all the enemies which she was compelled to encounter could easily be separated from one another. The Sabine, the Latin, the Etruscan, the Volscian, and the Æquian nationality was each a loose league, the cities of which frequently fought among themselves, and were then glad to obtain alien aid, which Rome was ready to furnish. She systematically instigated quarrels between nobles and commoners, between cities and between nationalities; and she used her powerful influence to prolong hostilities, and to prevent the restoration of confidence in peace. When two neighboring states were at war with each other, she sought an excuse to intervene, preferably becoming the ally of the weaker party. When the foe was subdued, she took a large part of the conquered territory, and planted in it a military colony, well fortified. The allied state which had ceased to be of service was insulted, driven into hostilities, vanquished, despoiled,

Each was kept separate

and occupied in like manner. from all others which had a similar interest, until all were so weak that even united they could make no effective resistance. And yet Etruria, Samnium, Carthage, Macedon, and Gaul had each been strong enough at some time, if aided by all the force of one of the others, to destroy the city on the Tiber.

After the peoples of Italy had been subdued, they were so insulted and oppressed that they were driven into frequent revolts, each of which was the occasion and the excuse for a new conquest, a new massacre, a new deportation of slaves, and a new distribution of confiscated lands in large tracts, to be occupied by slaves brought from a distance. The mixed population found that more of them knew Latin than any other tongue; and under such influences that language took possession of Etruria, Samnium, the Po-Basin, southern Italy, and much of northern Africa, Gaul, and nearly all of Spain. Merivale said that “the success of the Romans in assimilating to themselves the barbarian races of their empire has been deemed one of the lost arts." It would be more correct to say that their cruelty in exterminating, enslaving, deporting, and mixing together the people of their conquered provinces has had no imitators in later. times.

The provinces were carefully separated from one another so long as they showed any traces of their hereditary national feeling. The people of one were not permitted to marry, to trade, or to buy land in another; and, after conquest, a country was sometimes divided into several provinces, each cut off from free commercial and social intercourse with the others. Such restrictions not only rendered military combinations against Rome

difficult, but gave to Roman merchants, who besides were exempt from certain taxes, many advantages in business. The modes of assessing and collecting revenue varied in the provinces, which also had different political privileges. These inequalities not only fomented provincial jealousies, but made the people feel that in any insurrection one town risked much more than another.

Rome systematically conciliated the local nobility in hostile as well as in allied cities. After conquering and annexing a province, she placed those cities which she did not destroy, under the control of Roman colonists or of native aristocrats; and the latter, in return for the power and wealth conferred on them, were required to oppress the populace, and thus make themselves dependent on the Imperial City, not only for the maintenance of their authority, but for the protection of their property and lives.

SEC. 468. Ruin.-The primary cause of the decay of the Roman republic in its last century was the lack of a numerous and intelligent middle class. The secondary causes, all of which grew directly or indirectly out of the primary cause, were the defects in the system of legislation and in the administration of the criminal law; the enlistment for long terms in the army of men without property, and without citizenship; the inequalities of political and industrial rights; the cruel system of plundering the provinces; the disagreement of the senate and the mob about the division of the plunder; the exclusion of the senators from industrial occupations that might have enabled them to earn an honest living; and the system of compelling candidates for high office to bribe the people with expensive shows. Neither luxury, nor irreligion, nor disregard of the marriage tie, nor the

lack of a system of representation, had any appreciable influence in causing the ruin of the republic. The most chaste, the most miserly, and the most superstitious people, with an advanced system of representation, could not have saved a government while afflicted with vices such as those of republican Rome.

This statement of the causes of the ruin of the republic implies that the state needed a political party organized for the purpose of advocating the needful reforms. But one of the most striking facts in Roman history is that no such party ever made its appearance; nor did any man of great prominence ever attempt to organize such a party. The chief questions of partisan contention were whether the mob in the capital should have grain for one-fifth of its market value or for nothing; whether they should have free grants of land, not for occupation, but for sale; whether the consuls should distribute to their soldiers small or large shares of the booty taken from the conquered provinces; whether the best places in the government should be given to the partisans of the senate or to those of the mob; and whether the courts should treat extortion and murder committed by citizens upon provincials, as crimes. In short, the Roman government had completely failed to perform many of its most important duties.

The wars fought in Italy were accompanied by fearful devastations, which involved cities, towns, country houses, orchards, vineyards, cattle, tools, and all forms of movable wealth, in destruction. The authority of law being superseded for years at a time by the clash of weapons, many men, deprived of other means of support, resorted to brigandage, and plundered districts which had been spared by the armies.