i9o6.] JORDAN— THE HUMAN HARVEST. 63 



tity of the human harvest engaged very early the attention of the 

 wise men of Rome. 



" The effect of the wars was that the ranks of the small farmers 

 were decimated, while the number of slaves w^ho did not serve in the 

 army multiplied " (Bury). 



Thus '' Vir gave place to Homo," real men to mere human beings. 

 There were always men enough such as they were. ''A hencoop 

 will be filled, W'hatcver the (original) number of hens," said Ben- 

 jamin Franklin. And thus the mob filled Rome. No wonder the 

 mob-leader, the mob-hero rose in relative importance. No wonder 

 " the little finger of Constantine was thicker than the loins of 

 Augustus." No wonder that " if Tiberius chastised his subjects 

 with whips, Valentinian chastised them with scorpions." 



" 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 intoxi- 

 cated with insolence and cruelty." " The worst government is that 

 which is most worshipped as divine." '' The emperor possessed in 

 the army an overwhelming force over which citizens had no in- 

 fluence, which was totally deaf to reason or eloquence, w^hich 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 barbarian's contempt for honest industry." " Roman 

 civilization w^as not a creative kind, it was military, that is destruc- 

 tive." What was the end of it all? The nation bred real men no 

 more. To cultivate the Roman fields " whole tribes were borrowed." 

 The man of the quick eye and the strong arm, gave place to the 

 slave, the scullion, the pariah, the man with the hoe, the man whose 

 lot does not change because in him there lies no power to change it. 

 " Slaves have wrongs, but freerfien alone have rights." So at the 

 end the Roman world yielded to the barbaric, because it was weaker 

 in force. " The barbarians settled and peopled the barbaric rather 

 than conquered it." And the process is recorded in history as the 

 fall of Rome. 



" Out of every hundred thousand strong men, eighty thousand 

 were slain. Out of every hundred thousand weaklings, ninety to 

 ninety-five thousand were left to survive." This is Dr. Seeck's cal- 



