s a free
show of fighting gladiators) or starved in the slums of the big
cities, utterly ignorant of the fact that their empire had outlived its
usefulness and was doomed to perish.

How could they realise the threatened danger? Rome made a fine showing
of outward glory. Well-paved roads connected the different provinces,
the imperial police were active and showed little tenderness for
highwaymen. The frontier was closely guarded against the savage tribes
who seemed to be occupying the waste lands of northern Europe. The whole
world was paying tribute to the mighty city of Rome, and a score of
able men were working day and night to undo the mistakes of the past and
bring about a return to the happier conditions of the early Republic.

But the underlying causes of the decay of the State, of which I have
told you in a former chapter, had not been removed and reform therefore
was impossible.

Rome was, first and last and all the time, a city-state as Athens and
Corinth had been city-states in ancient Hellas. It had been able to
dominate the Italian peninsula. But Rome as the ruler of the entire
civilised world was a political impossibility and could not endure. Her
young men were killed in her endless wars. Her farmers were ruined by
long military service and by taxation. They either became professional
beggars or hired themselves out to rich landowners who gave them board
and lodging in exchange for their services and made them "serfs," those
unfortunate human beings who are neither slaves nor freemen, but who
have become part of the soil upon which they work, like so many cows,
and the trees.

The Empire, the State, had become everything. The common citizen had
dwindled down to less than nothing. As for the slaves, they had heard
the words that were spoken by Paul. They had accepted the message of the
humble carpenter of Nazareth. They did not rebel against their masters.
On the contrary, they had been taught to be meek and they obeyed their
superiors. But they had lost all interest in the affairs of this world
which had proved such a miserable place of abode. They were willing to
fight the good fight that they might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
But they were not willing to engage in warfare for the benefit of an
ambitious emperor who aspired to glory by way of a foreign campaign in
the land of the Parthians or the Numidians or the Scots.

And so conditions grew worse as the centuries went by. The first
Empero