102 THE VICES AND VIRTUES OP ROME 



Emperors built new Fora for the workers : open 

 spaces with beautiful marble colonnades on each side 

 where the worker could shelter from the sun and play 

 his everlasting dice or bet on the next chariot race. 

 I have seen the " show-places" of many cities — 

 London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, Belfast and 

 Dublin, New York and Chicago, Paris, Brussels, 

 Amsterdam, Cologne, Florence, Venice, Rome, Sydney, 

 Melbourne, Durban, etc. — but they are tawdry com- 

 pared with the Fora of ancient Rome. 



All this, although it gives us a more just idea of a 

 dead civilization, must not blind us to the defects and 

 weaknesses of Rome — slavery, parasitism, national 

 cupidity, brutality here and there. From the point 

 of view of national stability there were two chief 

 defects. It is mere rhetoric to talk of the "vices" 

 of Rome bringing about its ruin. The causes were 

 the exhaustion due to constant war and the economic 

 rottenness which resulted from their plundering the 

 world. Rome, for all its " genius for organization," 

 had a bad fiscal system, and there was the profound 

 economic truth which must have dawned upon every 

 reader of the preceding pages that it did not earn by 

 labour what it enjoyed. There was no economic 

 basis to the splendid structure. 



And war went on century by century. In the first 

 century before Christ the workers sold their democratic 

 birthright (for baths, circuses, free bread, etc.) and 

 accepted an Emperor. Within a short time quite 

 worthless men mounted the throne, and there had to 

 be assassinations and struggles for the dignity. In 

 the second half of the first century after Christ a 

 great improvement was brought about by the Stoic 

 philosophy and by the infusion of fresh provincial 



