THE EXAMPLE OF ROME 195 



prosperity prevailed because of the expansion of commerce and 

 the great booty obtained by Rome from her conquests of Car- 

 thage, Spain, Macedonia, and other regions. "The passion for 

 enjoyment, so long restrained, burst out in all the primitive and 

 animal indulgences ; in gluttony and sensuality, in the craving for 

 violent excitement, and in that gross form of ostentation and 

 display which marks the first blundering efforts of the country- 

 man grown rich. ... It is true that those plebeians who 

 remained in the country still lived a sober and honorable family 

 life, after the manner of their fathers, respecting with equal 

 simplicity the nobility and the law; but those who had settled 

 at Rome in order to devote themselves to commerce or shopkeep- 

 ing or contracting [which was a most lucrative occupation] . . . 

 acquired all the vices that corrupt ... a rich commercial city." 

 Both in city and country "the deadening spirit of caste exclu- 

 siveness, the regard for family and friends and dependents, the 

 calls of ambition or avarice, superseded the old-fashioned 

 promptings of duty ; while attempts to hasten the transformation 

 of the old agricultural society became more pronounced and 

 determined." 



In political life the tendencies were the same as in social life. 

 "There grew up, even among the aristocracy, a generation of 

 arrogant and ambitious politicians, who transformed the reasoned 

 and moderate Liberalism of Scipio and his followers into a revo- 

 lutionary movement at variance with all the ancient principles 

 of social discipline, and destined to set public and private life at 

 the mercy of passion and self-seeking. . . . Nowhere was the new 

 school of policy seen to less advantage than in the sphere of 

 foreign policy. . , . To despise all foreigners, to be always in 

 the right, to make the end justify the means ; these were the prin- 

 ciples of the new diplomacy, which with a perfidy that grew with 

 each success, reduced the allied States of Rhodes, Pergamus, 

 and Egypt to a position of ignominious dependence, and, alike 

 in the independent republics of Greece and the great monarchies 



