ly
proved by the extremely prosperous condition in which it was during the
eighty years when Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines filled
the imperial throne. "At that period," says Gibbon, "notwithstanding the
propensity of mankind to exalt the past and depreciate the present, the
tranquil and prosperous condition of the empire was warmly felt and
honestly confessed by the provincials as well as the Romans."[42] "They
affirm," says a contemporary writer, "that, with the increase of the
arts, the human species has visibly multiplied. They celebrate the
increasing beauty of the cities, the beautiful face of the country,
cultivated and adorned like an immense garden, and the long festival of
peace which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of their ancient
animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future danger."[43]

Ancient as well as modern historians are full of complaints, in the
later periods of the Roman empire, of the prodigious increase of wealth
in the hands of the rich, and decline in the remuneration of industry to
the poor. Their complaints on this subject are so numerous, and
supported by such an array of facts, as to leave no room for doubt that
they are well founded. Indeed, it seems to have been generally true of
the whole empire north of the Mediterranean, what Mr Finlay shows was
the case down to the very latest periods in Greece, that while industry
and population in the country were ruined, the towns were in a state of
affluence and prosperity. Even so early as the time of Plutarch, the
accumulation of _debts_ had come to be complained of as an extensive
evil.[44] "These debts," says Finlay, "were generally contracted to
Roman money-lenders. So injurious did their effects become to the
provinces, that they afforded to one class the means of _accumulating
enormous fortunes by forcing others into abject poverty_. The property
of the provincial debtors was at length transferred to a very great
extent to Roman creditors. Instead of invigorating the upper classes, by
substituting an industrious timocracy for an idle aristocracy, it had a
very different effect. It introduced new feelings of rivalry and
distrust, by filling the country with foreign landlords. The weight of
debts seems to have been the chief cause of revolutions in the ancient
world. The Greeks could not long maintain the struggle, and they sunk
gradually lower in wealth, until their poverty introduced an altered
state o