y; for the government being
in the hands of the rich, as in England a century since, and in France
before the Revolution, favored the rich at the expense of the poor. It
became disgraceful at Rome to perform manual labor, and a wall separated
the laboring classes from the capitalists, which could not be passed.
Industrial art took the lowest place in the scale of labor, and was in the
hands of slaves. The traffic in money, and the farming of the revenue
formed the mainstay and stronghold of the Roman economy. The free
population of Italy declined, while the city of Rome increased. The loss
was supplied by slaves. In the year 502 of the city, the Roman burgesses
in Italy numbered two hundred and ninety-eight thousand men capable of
bearing arms. Fifty years later, the number was only two hundred and
fourteen thousand. The nation visibly diminished, and the community was
resolved into masters and slaves. And this decline of citizens and
increase of slaves were beheld with indifference, for pride, and cruelty,
and heartlessness were the characteristics of the higher classes.

(M935) With the progress of luxury, and the decline of the rural
population, and the growth of disproportionate fortunes, residence in the
capital became more and more coveted, and more and more costly. Rents rose
to an unexampled height. Extravagant prices were paid for luxuries. When a
bushel of corn sold for fivepence, a barrel of anchovies from the Black
Sea cost L14, and a beautiful boy twenty-four thousand sesterces (L246),
more than a farmer's homestead. Money came to be prized as the end of
life, and all kinds of shifts and devices were made to secure it.
Marriage, on both sides, became an object of mercantile speculation.

(M936) In regard to education, there was a higher development than is
usually supposed, and literature and art were cultivated, even while the
nation declined in real virtue and strength. By means of the Greek slaves,
the Greek language and literature reached even the lower ranks, to a
certain extent. "The comedies indicate that the humblest classes were
familiar with a sort of Latin, which could no more be understood without a
knowledge of Greek, than Wieland's German without a knowledge of French."
Greek was undoubtedly spoken by the higher classes, as French is spoken in
all the courts of Europe. In the rudiments of education, the lowest people
were instructed, and even slaves were schoolmasters. At the close of the
Puni