But it matters not whether the Emperors were good or bad, if the regime to which they consecrated their energies was exerted to crush the liberties of mankind.  The imperial despotism, whether brilliant or disgraceful, was a mournful retrograde step in civilization; it implied the extinction of patriotism and the general degradation of the people, and would have been impossible in the days of Cato, Scipio, or Metellus.

If we turn from the Emperors to the class which before the dictatorship of Julius Caesar had the ascendency in the State, and for several centuries the supreme power, we shall find but little that is flattering to a nation or to humanity.  Under the Emperors the aristocracy had degenerated in morals as well as influence.  They still retained their enormous fortunes, originally acquired as governors of provinces, and continually increased by fortunate marriages and speculations.  Indeed, nothing was more marked and melancholy at Rome than the vast disproportion in fortunes.  In the better days of the republic, property was more equally divided; the citizens were not ambitious for more land than they could conveniently cultivate.  But the lands, obtained by conquest, gradually fell into the possession of powerful families.  The classes of society widened as great fortunes were accumulated; pride of wealth kept pace with pride of ancestry; and when plebeian families had obtained great estates, they were amalgamated with the old aristocracy.  The equestrian order, founded substantially on wealth, grew daily in importance.  Knights ultimately rivalled senatorial families.  Even freedmen in an age of commercial speculation became powerful for their riches.  The pursuit of money became a passion, and the rich assumed all the importance and consideration which had once been bestowed upon those who had rendered great public services.

As the wealth of the world flowed naturally to the capital, Rome became a city of princes, whose fortunes were almost incredible.  It took eighty thousand dollars a year to support the ordinary senatorial dignity.  Some senators owned whole provinces.  Trimalchio, a rich freedman whom Petronius ridiculed, could afford to lose thirty millions of sesterces in a single voyage without sensibly diminishing his fortune.  Pallas, a freedman of the Emperor Claudius, possessed a fortune of three hundred millions of sesterces.  Seneca, the philosopher, amassed an enormous fortune.

As the Romans were a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, they accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living which has had no parallel.  The pleasures of the table and the cares of the kitchen were the most serious avocation of the aristocracy in the days of the greatest corruption.  They had around them regular courts of parasites and flatterers, and they employed even persons of high rank as their chamberlains and stewards.  Carving was taught in celebrated schools, and the masters of this sublime art were held in higher estimation than philosophers or poets.  Says Juvenal,—­