political freedom as was consistent with her
sovereignty; she had wellnigh succeeded in welding all Italy into a
Roman nation. It is noteworthy that the large majority of the Italian
cities clung to her, even in the darkest straits to which she was
reduced by Hannibal.

Yet when the fall of her last great rival left Rome irresistible abroad,
her methods changed. It is hard to see how even Carthaginians could have
been more cruel, more grasping, more corrupt than the Roman rulers of
the provinces. Having conquered the governments of the world, Rome had
to face outbreak after outbreak from the unarmed, unsheltered masses of
the people. Her barbarity drove them to mad despair. "Servile" wars,
slave outbreaks are dotted over all the last century of the Roman
Republic.

The good, if there was any good, that Roman dominion brought the world
at that period was the spreading of Greek culture across the western
half of the world. As Rome mastered the Greek states one by one, their
genius won a subtler triumph over the conqueror. Her generals recognized
and admired a culture superior to their own. They carried off the
statues of Greece for the adornment of their villas, and with equal
eagerness they appropriated her manners and her thought, her literature
and her gods.

But this superficial culture could not save the Roman Republic from the
dry-rot that sapped her vitals from within. As a mere matter of numbers,
the actual citizens of Rome or even of the semi-Roman districts close
around her were too few to continue fighting over all the vast empire
they controlled. The sturdy peasant population of Italy slowly
disappeared. The actual inhabitants of the capital came to consist of a
few thousand vastly wealthy families, who held all the power, a few
thousand more of poorer citizens dependent on the rich, and then a vast
swarm of slaves and foreigners, feeders on the crumbs of the Roman
table.

In the battles against Carthage, the mass of Rome's armies had consisted
of her own citizens or of allies closely united to them in blood and
fortune. Her later victories were won by hired troops, men gathered from
every clime and every race. Roman generals still might lead them, Roman
laws environ them, Roman gold employ them. Yet the fact remained, that
in these armies lay the strength of the Republic, no longer within her
own walls, no longer in the stout hearts of her citizens.

Perhaps the world itself was slow in seeing this dege