the country was already in some degree cultivated, and the Alban range as well as various other heights of the Campagna were occupied by strongholds, when the Latin frontier emporium arose on the Tiber. Whether it was a resolution of the Latin confederacy, or the clear-sighted genius of some unknown founder, or the natural development of traffic, that called the city of Rome into being, it is vain even to surmise.

But in connection with this view of the position of Rome as the emporium of Latium, another observation suggests itself. At the time when history begins to dawn on us, Rome appears, in contradistinction to the league of the Latin communities, as a compact urban unity. The Latin habit of dwelling in open villages, and of using the common stronghold only for festivals and assemblies or in case of special need, was subjected to restriction at a far earlier period, probably, in the canton of Rome than anywhere else in Latium. The Roman did not cease to manage his farm in person, or to regard it as his proper home; but the unwholesome atmosphere of the Campagna could not but induce him to take up his abode as much as possible on the more airy and salubrious city hills; and by the side of the cultivators of the soil there must have been a numerous non-agricultural population, partly foreigners, partly natives, settled there from early times. This to some extent accounts for the dense population of the old Roman territory, which may be estimated at the utmost at 115 square miles, partly of marshy or sandy soil, and which, even under the earliest constitution of the city, furnished a force of 3300 freemen; so that it must have numbered at least 10,000 free inhabitants. But further, every one acquainted with the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar in their public and private life, and that the distinction between them and the other Latins and Italians in general is preeminently the distinction between citizen and rustic. Rome, indeed, was not a mercantile city like Corinth or Carthage; for Latium was an essentially agricultural region, and Rome was in the first instance, and continued to be, preeminently a Latin city. But the distinction between Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand how, along with and in addition to

Latin husbandry, an urban life should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus have laid the foundation for its distinctive career.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON THE EDGE OF DECLINE.'

BY CHARLES MERIVALE.

(From "History of the Romans under the Empire.")

[CHARLES MERIVALE: An English preacher and historian; born in 1808. He graduated triple first class at St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1830. He wrote "The History of the Romans under the Empire" (1862), "Keatsii Hyperionis" (1862), "The Conversion of the Roman Empire" (1864), "The Conversion of the Northern Nations" (1865), etc.]

THE circumstances of the empire might indeed well inspire profound anxiety in the breast of one to whom its maintenance was confided. Hitherto we have seen the frontiers assailed in many quarters, and the energies of the bravest princes tasked in their defense. But these attacks have been local and desultory. The Chatti on the Rhine, the Marcomanni on the Upper, the Samaritans on the Lower Danube, the Roxalani on the shores of the Euxine, have often assailed and vexed the provinces, but separately and at different times; Aurelius had to make head against all these enemies at once. The unity of the

empire imparted a germ of union to its assailants. Hence no champion of Rome had so hard a task; hence Aurelius, far from making permanent conquests beyond his frontiers, stood everywhere on the defensive, and confronted the foe by his lieutenants in Gaul, Pannonia, Dacia, or Moesia, while he planted himself commonly in the center of his line of stations, at Carnuntum, Vindobona, or Sirmium; hence his wars were protracted through a period of twelve years, and though his partial victories gained him ten times the title of Imperator, none was sufficiently decisive to break the forces banded against him. The momentary submission of one tribe or another led to no general result; notwithstanding his own sanguine hopes and the fond persuasion of his countrymen, his last campaign saw the subjugation of Scythia and the safety of the empire still distant and doubtful. The barbarians were stronger at this crisis than ever,-stronger in unity, stronger in arms and tactics, stronger possibly in numbers. Neither to Marius, we may believe, nor to Germanicus, nor to Trajan,

By permission of Miss C. Merivale and Longmans, Green & Co.

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would they now have yielded as heretofore. But the empire was at least as much weaker. The symptoms of decline, indeed, were as yet hardly manifest to common observation; under ordinary circumstances they might still have eluded the notice even of statesmen; but in the stress of a great calamity they became manifest to all. The chief of the state was deeply impressed with them. Against anxiety and apprehension he struggled as a matter of duty, but the effort was sore and hopeless; and from the anticipation of disasters beyond his control he escaped, when possible, to pensive meditations on his own moral nature, which at least might lie within it.

The brilliancy of the city and the great provincial capitals, the magnificence of their shows and entertainments, still remained, perhaps, undimmed. The dignity of the temples and palaces of Greece and Rome stood, even in their best days, in marked contrast with the discomfort and squalor of their lanes and cabins. The spacious avenues of Nero concealed perhaps more miserable habitations than might be seen in the narrow streets of Augustus; but as yet we hear no distinct murmurs of poverty among the populace. The causes, indeed, were already at work which, in the second or third generation, reduced the people of the towns to pauperism, and made the public service an intolerable burden: the decline, namely, of agriculture and commerce, the isolation of the towns, the disappearance of the precious metals, the return of society to a state of barter, in which every petty community strove to live on its own immediate produce. Such, at a later period, was the condition of the empire, as revealed in the codes of the fourth century. These symptoms were doubtless strongly developed in the third, but we have at least no evidence of them in the second. We may reasonably suppose, indeed, that there was a gradual, though slow, diminution in the amount of gold and silver in circulation. The result would be felt first in the provinces, and latest in the cities and Rome itself, but assuredly it was already in progress. Two texts of Pliny assert the constant drain of specie to the East; and the assertion is confirmed by the circumstances of the case; for the Indians, and the nations beyond India, who transmitted to the West their silks and spices, cared little for the wines and oils of Europe, still less for the manufactures in wool and leather which formed the staples of commerce in the Mediterranean. There was still a great, perhaps an increasing, demand for these metals in works

of art and ornament, and much was consumed in daily use, much withdrawn from circulation and eventually lost by the thriftless habit of hoarding. But the supply from the mines of Thrace, Spain, and Germany was probably declining, for it was extracted by forced labor, the most expensive, the most harassing, and the most precarious. The difficulty of maintaining the yield of the precious metals is marked in the severe regulations of the later emperors, and is further attested by the progressive debasement of the currency.

Not more precise is our information respecting the movement of the population, which was also at this period on the verge of decline. To the partial complaints of such a decline in Italy, muttered, as they generally were, by the poets or satirists, I have hitherto paid little heed. In statements of this kind there is generally much false sentiment, some angry misrepresentation. The substitution of slave for free labor in many parts of Italy may have had the appearance of a decline in population, while it actually indicated no more than a movement and transfer. It was more important, however, in the future it foreshadowed than in the present reality. The slave population was not reproductive; it was only kept at its level by fresh drafts from abroad. Whenever the supply should be cut off, the residue would rapidly dwindle. This supply was maintained partly by successful wars, but still more by a regular and organized traffic. The slaves from the North might be exchanged for Italian manufactures and produce; but the venders from many parts, such as Arabia and Ethiopia, Central Africa, and even Cappadocia and other districts of Asia Minor, would take, I suppose, nothing but specie. With the contraction of the currency, the trade would languish, and under this depression a country like Italy, which was almost wholly stocked by importation, would become quickly depopulated. Still more, on the decline of the slave population, there would follow a decline of production, a decline of the means of the proprietors, a decline in the condition of the free classes, and consequently in their numbers also. That such a decline was actually felt under the Flavian emperors appears in the sudden adoption of the policy of alimentation, or public aid to impoverished freemen.

Nor was it in this way only that slavery tended to the decline of population. Slavery in ancient, and doubtless in all times was a hotbed of vice and selfish indulgence, enervating the spirit and vital forces of mankind, discouraging legitimate

marriage, and enticing to promiscuous and barren concubinage. The fruit of such hateful unions, if fruit there were, or could be, engaged little regard from their selfish fathers, and both law and usage continued to sanction the exposure of infants, from which the female sex undoubtedly suffered most. The losses of Italy from this horrid practice were probably the greatest; but the provinces also lost proportionably; the imitation of Roman habits was rife on the remotest frontiers; the conquests of the empire were consolidated by the attractions of Roman indulgence and sensuality; slavery threw discredit on all manual labor, and engendered a false sentiment of honor, which constrained the poorer classes of freemen to dependence and celibacy; vice and idleness went hand in hand, and combined to stunt the moral and physical growth of the Roman citizen, leaving his weak and morbid frame exposed in an unequal contest to the fatal influences of his climate.

If, however, the actual amount of population in Italy and other metropolitan districts had but lately begun sensibly to decline, for some generations it had been recruited mainly from a foreign stock, and was mingled with the refuse of every nation, civilized and barbarian. Slaves, freedmen, clients of the rich and powerful, had glided by adoption into the Roman gentes, the names of which still retained a fallacious air of antiquity, while their members had lost the feelings and principles which originally signalized them. As late as the time of the younger Pliny, we find the gentile names of the republic still common, though many of them have ceased to recur on the roll of the great magistracies, where they have been supplanted by others, hitherto obscure or unknown; but the surnames of Pliny's friends and correspondents, which distinguish the family from the house, are in numerous instances strange to us, and often grotesque and barbarous. The gradual exhaustion of the true Roman blood had been already marked and deplored under Claudius, and there can be no doubt, though materials are wanting for tracing it, that the flux continued to gather force through succeeding generations.

The decay of moral principles which hastened the disintegration of Roman society was compensated by no new discoveries in material cultivation. The idea of civilization common to the Greeks and Romans was the highest development of the bodily faculties, together with the imagination; but in exploring the agencies of the natural world, and turning its forces to