The
strength of Rome was in her free citizens. Where a family of slaves was
settled down, a village of freemen had disappeared; the material for the
legions diminished; the dregs of the free population which remained behind
crowded into Rome, without occupation except in politics, and with no
property save in their votes, of course to become the clients of the
millionaires, and to sell themselves to the highest bidders. With all his
wealth there were but two things which the Roman noble could buy,
political power and luxury; and in these directions his whole resources
were expended. The elections, once pure, became matters of annual bargain
between himself and his supporters. The once hardy, abstemious mode of
living degenerated into grossness and sensuality.
And his character was assailed simultaneously on another side with equally
mischievous effect. The conquest of Greece brought to Rome a taste for
knowledge and culture; but the culture seldom passed below the surface,
and knowledge bore but the old fruit which it had borne in Eden. The elder
Cato used to say that the Romans were like their slaves--the less Greek
they knew the better they were. They had believed in the gods with pious
simplicity. The Greeks introduced them to an Olympus of divinities whom
the practical Roman found that he must either abhor or deny to exist.
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