tizenship._

"Crescit interea Roma Albae ruinis"--_Meanwhile Rome grows on the ruins
of Alba_. They who would have their city become a great empire, must
endeavour by every means to fill it with inhabitants; for without a
numerous population no city can ever succeed in growing powerful. This
may be effected in two ways, by gentleness or by force. By gentleness,
when you offer a safe and open path to all strangers who may wish to
come and dwell in your city, so as to encourage them to come there of
their own accord; by force, when after destroying neighbouring towns,
you transplant their inhabitants to live in yours. Both of these methods
were practised by Rome, and with such success, that in the time of her
sixth king there dwelt within her walls eighty thousand citizens fit to
bear arms. For the Romans loved to follow the methods of the skilful
husbandman, who, to insure a plant growing big and yielding and maturing
its fruit, cuts off the first shoots it sends out, that the strength
remaining in the stem, it may in due season put forth new and more
vigorous and more fruitful branches. And that this was a right and a
necessary course for Rome to take for establishing and extending her
empire, is proved by the example of Sparta and Athens, which, although
exceedingly well-armed States, and regulated by excellent laws, never
reached the same greatness as the Roman Republic; though the latter, to
all appearance, was more turbulent and disorderly than they, and, so far
as laws went, not so perfectly governed. For this we can offer no other
explanation than that already given. For by augmenting the numbers of
her citizens in both the ways named, Rome was soon able to place two
hundred and eighty thousand men under arms; while neither Sparta nor
Athens could ever muster more than twenty thousand; and this, not
because the situation of these countries was less advantageous than that
of Rome, but simply from the difference in the methods they followed.

For Lycurgus, the founder of the Spartan Republic, thinking nothing so
likely to relax his laws as an admixture of new citizens, did all he
could to prevent intercourse with strangers; with which object, besides
refusing these the right to marry, the right of citizenship, and all
such other social rights as induce men to become members of a community,
he ordained that in this republic of his the only money current should
be of leather, so that none might be tempted to repair th