196 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



of Asia, fomented discord and espionage, sedition and civil war. 

 ... In its dealings with barbarians it acknowledged no code of 

 honor; they might be attacked and exterminated without cause 

 or excuse or declaration of war." 



This disgraceful state of affairs lasted through the second 

 century. "At the first symptoms of its decadence," in the third 

 century, "the Roman public had burst out in a passion of pride 

 and savagery which swept Carthage and Corinth clean from their 

 foundations." Then followed other wars which were less suc- 

 cessful, as might be expected from so decadent a people. The 

 Spanish War from 153 to 133 B. C. was "a costly inglorious cam- 

 paign which lasted twenty years and almost reduced Rome to 

 bankruptcy." When the great Slave Revolt took place in Sicily 

 from 139 to 132 the government had real difficult}' in suppressing 

 it. In this revolt, as in many other occurrences, we see signs that 

 the trouble lay chiefly in the southern part of the country. The 

 healthy growth of the Roman Empire came to an end during this 

 sad century. Expansion, to be sure, still took place, for other 

 countries were suffering even more than Rome, but it was at best 

 a sickly growth. 



What caused this second century to bie so disastrous.'' Is such 

 disaster the inevitable accompaniment of growth.'' Must there 

 be decline to balance progress.'* Perhaps, but the study of evo- 

 lution as it is seen in geology emphatically insists that such a 

 decline always has a physical cause. Was the decline due to the 

 wealth and luxury that came from foreign conquest.'' Or was it 

 due to the importation of slaves who caused deterioration in the 

 racial stock of Rome.'' Doubtless both these causes are highly 

 important. Their importance is much lessened, however, by the 

 fact that a similar decay took place in Greece, Egypt, Carthage, 

 Syria, and many other countries. So far as wealth and slavery 

 were concerned many of those countries were the opposite of Rome. 

 They were plundered and not plunderers : they lost slaves instead 



