burgesses capable of bearing arms, there appears a regular falling-off,
for the list in 600 stood at 324,000, that in 607 at 322,000, that
in 623 at 319,000 burgesses fit for service--an alarming result for a
time of profound peace at home and abroad. If matters were to go on
at this rate, the burgess-body would resolve itself into planters and
slaves; and the Roman state might at length, as was the case with the
Parthians, purchase its soldiers in the slave-market.

Ideas of Reform
Scipio Aemilianus

Such was the external and internal condition of Rome, when the state
entered on the seventh century of its existence. Wherever the eye
turned, it encountered abuses and decay; the question could not
but force itself on every sagacious and well-disposed man, whether
this state of things was not capable of remedy or amendment. There
was no want of such men in Rome; but no one seemed more called to the
great work of political and social reform than Publius Cornelius Scipio
Aemilianus Africanus (570-625), the favourite son of Aemilius Paullus
and the adopted grandson of the great Scipio, whose glorious surname
of Africanus he bore by virtue not merely of hereditary but of
personal right. Like his father, he was a man temperate and
thoroughly healthy, never ailing in body, and never at a loss to
resolve on the immediate and necessary course of action. Even
in his youth he had kept aloof from the usual proceedings of
political novices--the attending in the antechambers of prominent
senators and the delivery of forensic declamations. On the other
hand he loved the chase--when a youth of seventeen, after having
served with distinction under his father in the campaign against
Perseus, he had asked as his reward the free range of the deer
forest of the kings of Macedonia which had been untouched for
four years--and he was especially fond of devoting his leisure to
scientific and literary enjoyment. By the care of his father he had
been early initiated into that genuine Greek culture, which elevated
him above the insipid Hellenizing of the semi-culture commonly in
vogue; by his earnest and apt appreciation of the good and bad
qualities in the Greek character, and by his aristocratic carriage,
this Roman made an impression on the courts of the east and even on
the scoffing Alexandrians. His Hellenism was especially recognizable
in the delicate irony of his discourse and in the classic purity of
his Latin. Although not stri