and those
who shared Cato's sentiments the maxim to which Polybius
a century before traced the decay of Hellas,(60) that it is the duty
of a citizen to keep great wealth together and therefore not to beget
too many children. Where were the times, when the designation
"children-producer" (-proletarius-) had been a term of honour
for the Roman?

Depopulation of Italy

In consequence of such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy
underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread
partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation.
A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked
to foreign lands. Already the aggregate amount of talent
and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates
and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean
demanded, transcended the resources of the peninsula, especially
as the elements thus sent abroad were in great part lost for ever
to the nation. For the more that the Roman community grew
into an empire embracing many nations, the more the governing aristocracy
lost the habit of looking on Italy as their exclusive home;
while of the men levied or enlisted for service a considerable portion
perished in the many wars, especially in the bloody civil war,
and another portion became wholly estranged from their native country
by the long period of service, which sometimes lasted for a generation.
In like manner with the public service, speculation kept
a portion of the landholders and almost the whole body
of merchants all their lives or at any rate for a long time
out of the country, and the demoralising itinerant life of trading
in particular estranged the latter altogether from civic existence
in the mother country and from the various conditions of family life.
As a compensation for these, Italy obtained on the one hand
the proletariate of slaves and freedmen, on the other hand
the craftsmen and traders flocking thither from Asia Minor, Syria,
and Egypt, who flourished chiefly in the capital and still more
in the seaport towns of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium.(61)
In the largest and most important part of Italy however,
even such a substitution of impure elements for pure;
but the population was visibly on the decline. Especially
was this true of the pastoral districts such as Apulia, the chosen land
of cattle-breeding, which is called by contemporaries the most deserted
part of Italy, and of the region around Rome,