ich really constituted Rome should expire. A small
nucleus of men had undertaken to conquer the Mediterranean world, and
had succeeded. In doing this they had diffused themselves over an
immense geographical surface, and necessarily became lost in the mass
with which they mingled. On the other hand, the deterioration of Italy
was insured by the slave system, and the ruin of Rome was accomplished
before the barbarians touched it. Whoever inquires the cause of the fall
of the Roman empire will find his answer in ascertaining what had become
of the Romans.

[Sidenote: Roman conquest produces homogeneous thought,]

The extinction of prodigies and superstitious legends was occasioned by
increased travel, through the merging of many separate nations into one
great empire. Intellectual communication attends material communication.
The spread of Roman influence around the borders of the Mediterranean
produced a tendency to homogeneous thought eminently dangerous to the
many forms of faith professed by so many different people.

[Sidenote: and revolutionizes religious ideas.]

After Tarquin was expelled the sacerdotal class became altogether
subordinate to the military, whose whole history shows that they
regarded religion as a mere state institution, without any kind of
philosophical significance, and chiefly to be valued for the control it
furnished over vulgar minds. It presented itself to them in the light of
a branch of industry, from which profit might be made by those who
practised it. They thought no more of concerning themselves individually
about it than in taking an interest in any other branch of lucrative
trade. As to any examination of its intellectual basis, they were not
sophists, but soldiers, blindly following the prescribed institutions of
their country with as little question as its military commands. For
these reasons, throughout the time of the republic, and also under the
early emperors, there never was much reluctance to the domestication of
any kind of worship in Rome. Indeed, the gods of the conquered countries
were established there to the gratification of the national vanity. From
this commingling of worship in the city, and intercommunication of ideas
in the provinces, the most important events arose.

[Sidenote: Imperialism prepares the way for monotheism.]

For it very soon was apparent that the political unity which had been
established over so great a geographical surface was the forerunner