PROBLEMS IN ROMAN HISTORY 79 



In reality, under the Republic as under the Empire the provinces 

 are but the praedia populi Romani. The Roman provinces and muni- 

 cipalities are only a vast field which a clever administration makes 

 use of to enrich imperial functionaries, and the classes directing the 

 community. To derive from these indications a general happiness 

 would be equivalent to affirming that the remuneration of the 

 workers is great where the shareholders have a large dividend, or if, 

 in regarding the economical side, we turn to the noble spheres of 

 letters, of arts and sciences, we see everywhere the signs of a great 

 and rapid decadence. The age which according to general opinion 

 receives its light from Augustus, and which according to the poet's 

 song marks a new century, is but the beginning of the last phase of 

 a great civilization which, already developed with the Greeks in the 

 eighth century, dies with Diocletian and Constantine. Notwith- 

 standing what has been said to the contrary, the traces of decadence 

 are visible not after the Antonines, but with Augustus himself, and 

 with the incapacity officially and wisely recognized by him of con- 

 quering Britain, restraining the Germans, and taming the Parthians. 

 Such decadence is after a few generations quite visible in art. No great 

 poet succeeds Virgil. Tacitus marks the end of the great Roman 

 historiography. Art reproduces in large and pompous manner 

 crystallized forms, and the cold and artificial religion of state suffo- 

 cates and dries any frank and noble aspiration in the human soul. 

 Free speech is silent everywhere; cold rhetoric and declamation 

 succeed to eloquence. And in sciences, with the exception of the 

 development of great public edifices which, as the history of Apollo- 

 dorus demonstrates, is always under the high inspiration of Greek 

 doctrine, all is transformed in a pure empiricism drying the germs of 

 theoretical speculation. Geometry has become surveying, and medi- 

 cine, judged unworthy of being studied by a Roman citizen, is left 

 to the Greeks. Ethics and philosophy are transformed into law and 

 regulation, which obliges all to obey the will of the legislator, who is 

 clever in law, but more so in handling the sword. And the greatest 

 pleasure of the Roman society is not to hear, as in the fine Athenian 

 times, the pricking playfulness of Aristophanes or divine verse of 

 Euripides, but rather to assist at the games of the Circus, where the 

 blood of the dying gladiators and that of the wild beasts stir up 

 voluptuousness and a desire for struggle. There still remains military 

 glory. But patriotism is already changing the career of arms; Italians 

 are despoiled of their weapons, and the legion, according to an an- 

 cient inscription from Aquileia, becomes barbara. In the Roman 

 society there is no place for the unwealthy, and it is quite natural 

 that the humble and afflicted should rapidly contribute to render 

 vigorous the incipient Christian society which, having later become 

 powerful, conquers and then associates itself to the decaying Empire. 



