d the fall of the
republic, it was computed that only two thousand citizens were possessed
of an independent substance. [51] Yet as long as the people bestowed,
by their suffrages, the honors of the state, the command of the legions,
and the administration of wealthy provinces, their conscious pride
alleviated in some measure, the hardships of poverty; and their wants
were seasonably supplied by the ambitious liberality of the candidates,
who aspired to secure a venal majority in the thirty-five tribes, or
the hundred and ninety-three centuries, of Rome. But when the prodigal
commons had not only imprudently alienated the use, but the inheritance
of power, they sunk, under the reign of the Caesars, into a vile and
wretched populace, which must, in a few generations, have been
totally extinguished, if it had not been continually recruited by the
manumission of slaves, and the influx of strangers. As early as the time
of Hadrian, it was the just complaint of the ingenuous natives, that the
capital had attracted the vices of the universe, and the manners of the
most opposite nations. The intemperance of the Gauls, the cunning and
levity of the Greeks, the savage obstinacy of the Egyptians and Jews,
the servile temper of the Asiatics, and the dissolute, effeminate
prostitution of the Syrians, were mingled in the various multitude,
which, under the proud and false denomination of Romans, presumed to
despise their fellow-subjects, and even their sovereigns, who dwelt
beyond the precincts of the Eternal City. [52]

[Footnote 50: The histories of Livy (see particularly vi. 36) are full
of the extortions of the rich, and the sufferings of the poor debtors.
The melancholy story of a brave old soldier (Dionys. Hal. l. vi. c.
26, p. 347, edit. Hudson, and Livy, ii. 23) must have been frequently
repeated in those primitive times, which have been so undeservedly
praised.]

[Footnote 51: Non esse in civitate duo millia hominum qui rem habereni.
Cicero. Offic. ii. 21, and Comment. Paul. Manut. in edit. Graev. This
vague computation was made A. U. C. 649, in a speech of the tribune
Philippus, and it was his object, as well as that of the Gracchi, (see
Plutarch,) to deplore, and perhaps to exaggerate, the misery of the
common people.]

[Footnote 52: See the third Satire (60-125) of Juvenal, who indignantly
complains,

Quamvis quota portio faecis Achaei!
Jampridem Syrus in Tiberem defluxit Orontes;
Et linguam et mores