ained
unsystematized in the Augustan system, he reduced to perfect
system and order. His laws were excellent and humane; he
introduced a special training for the Civil Service, which
wrought enormous economies in public affairs: officials were no
longer to obtain their posts by imperial appointment, which might
be wise or not, but because of their own tested efficiency for
the work.--Then came the golden twenty-three years of Antoninus
Pius, from 138 to 161: a time of peace and strength, with a wise
and saintly emperor on the throne. The flower Rome now was in
perfect bloom: an urbane, polished, and ordered civilization
covered the whole expanse of the empire. Hadrian had legislated
for the down-trodden: no longer had you power of life and death
over your slaves; they were protected by the law like other men;
you could not even treat them harshly. True, there was slavery,
--a canker; and there were the gladiatorial games; we may feel
piously superior if we like. But there was much humanism also.
There was no proletariat perpetually on the verge of starvation,
as in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. If we can look
back now and say, There this, that, or the other sign of oncoming
decay; the thing could not last;--it will also be remarkably
easy for us, two thousand years hence, to be just as wise about
these present years 'of grace.' It is perhaps safe to say,
--as I think Gibbon says--that there was greater happiness
among a greater number then than there has been at any time in
Christendom since. Gibbon calculates that there were twice as
many slaves as free citizens: we do know that their number was
immense,--that it was not unusual for one man to own several
thousand. But they were well treated: often highly educated;
might become free with no insuperable difficulty:--their position
was perhaps comparable with that of slaves in Turkey now, who
are insulted if you call them servants. Gibbon estimates the
population at a hundred and twenty millions; many authorities
think that figure too high; but Gibbon may well be right, or
even under the mark,--and it may account for the rapid decline
that followed the age of the Antonines. For I suspect that a too
great population is a great danger, that hosts at such times pour
into incarnation, besides those that have good right to call
themselves human souls;--that the maxim "fewer children and
better ones" is based upon deep and occult laws. China in