132 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



character, 'the small farmers/ the 'hardy dwellers on the flanks of the 

 Apennines/ who were gone. 



"The period of the Antonines was a period of sterility and barren- 

 ness. The human harvest was bad." Augustus offered bounties on 

 marriage until 'Celibacy became the most comfortable and most ex- 

 pensive condition of life.' "Marriage/' says Metellus, "is a duty which, 

 however painful, every citizen ought manfully to discharge." 



"The mainspring of the Roman army," says Hodgkin, "for centuries 

 had been the patient strength and courage, capacity for enduring hard- 

 ships, instinctive submission to military discipline of the population 

 which lined the ranges of the Apennines." 



Berry states that an "effect of the wars was that the ranks of the 

 small farmers were decimated, while the number of slaves who did not 

 serve in the army multiplied." Thus 'Yir gave place to Homo,' real 

 men to mere human beings. 



With the failure of men grew the strength of the mob, and of the 

 emperor, its exponent. "The little finger of Constantino was stronger 

 than the loins of Augustus." At the end "the barbarians settled and 

 peopled the Eoman Empire rather than conquered it." "The Roman 

 world would not have yielded to the barbaric were it not decidedly in- 

 ferior in force." Through the weakness of men, the Emperor assumed 

 divine right. Dr. Zumpt says, "Government having assumed godhead, 

 took at the same time the appurtenances of it. Officials multiplied. 

 Subjects lost their rights. Abject fear paralyzed the people, and those 

 that ruled were intoxicated with insolence and cruelty." 



"The Emperor/' says Professor Seeley, "possessed in the army an 

 overwhelming force over which citizens had no influence, which was 

 totally deaf to reason or eloquence, which had no patriotism, because 

 it had no country, which had no humanity, because it had no domestic 

 ties." "There runs through Roman literature a brigand's and a bar- 

 barian's contempt for honest industry." "The worst government is 

 that which is most worshipped as divine." 



So runs the word of the historian. The elements are not hard 

 to find. Extinction of manly blood; extinction of freedom of thought 

 and action; increase of wealth gained by plunder; loss of national ex- 

 istence. 



XXXII. So fell Greece and Rome, Carthage and Egypt, the Arabs 

 and the Moors, because, their warriors dying, the nation bred real 

 men no more. The man of the strong arm and the quick eye gave place 

 to the slave, the pariah, the man with the hoe, whose lot changes not 

 with the change of dynasties. 



XXXIII. Other nations of Europe may furnish illustrations in 

 greater or less degree. Germany guards her men, and reduces the waste 

 of war to a minimum. She is 'military, but not warlike/ and this dis- 



