The 

 Human 

 Harvest 



[34] 



fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were scarce- 

 ly inferior in this regard to Lucullus and 

 Apicius, their waste and luxury not consti- 

 tuting the slightest check to the advance of 

 the nations to which these men belonged. 

 The people who lived in luxury in Rome 

 were scattered more thinly than in any mod- 

 ern state of Europe. The masses lived at 

 all times more poorly and frugally because 

 they could do nothing else. Can we con- 

 ceive that a war-force of untold millions of 

 people is rendered effeminate by the luxury 

 of a few hundreds?" 



"Too long have historians looked on the 

 rich and noble as marking the fate of the 

 world. Half the Roman Empire was made 

 up of rough barbarians untouched by Greek 

 or Roman culture." 



"Whatever the remote and ultimate cause 

 may have been, the immediate cause to which 

 the fall of the empire can be traced is a phy- 

 sical, not a moral decay. In valor, discipline 

 and science the Roman armies remained 

 what they had always been, and the peas- 

 ant emperors of Illyricum were worthy suc- 

 cessors of Cincinnatus and Caius Marius. 



