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.
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