ties the nobility itself defrayed the
costs of government and fetes. The tax levied for the treasury of the
emperor went entirely to the imperial chest; it was necessary, then,
that the rich of the city should at their own charges celebrate the
games, heat the baths, pave the streets, construct the bridges,
aqueducts, and circuses. They did this for more than two centuries,
and did it generously; monuments scattered over the whole of the
empire and thousands of inscriptions are a witness to this.

=The Imperial Regime.=--After the conquest three or four hundred
families of the nobility of Rome governed and exploited the rest of
the world. The emperor deprived them of the government and subjected
them to his tyranny. The Roman writers could groan over their lost
liberty. The inhabitants of the provinces had nothing to regret; they
remained subject, but in place of several hundreds of masters,
ceaselessly renewed and determined to enrich themselves, they had now
a single sovereign, the emperor, interested to spare them. Tiberius
stated the imperial policy in the following words: "A good shepherd
shears his sheep, but does not flay them." For more than two centuries
the emperors contented themselves with shearing the people of the
empire; they took much of their money, but they protected them from
the enemy without, and even against their own agents. When the
provincials had grounds of complaint on account of the violence or the
robbery of their governor, they could appeal to the emperor and secure
justice. It was known that the emperor received complaints against his
subordinates; this was sufficient to frighten bad governors and
reassure subjects. Some emperors, like Marcus Aurelius, came to
recognize that they had duties to their subjects. The other emperors
at least left their subjects to govern themselves when they had no
interest to prevent this.

The imperial regime was a loss for the Romans, but a deliverance for
their subjects: it abased the conquerors and raised the vanquished,
reconciling them and preparing them for assimilation in the empire.

SOCIAL LIFE UNDER THE EMPIRE

=Moral Decay Continues at Rome.=--Seneca in his Letters and Juvenal in
his Satires have presented portraits of the men and women of their
time so striking that the corruption of the Rome of the Caesars has
remained proverbial. They were not only the disorders left over from
the republic--the gross extravagance of the rich, the ferocity