supplicating style of the slaves in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume the royal and tragic declamations of the grandsons of Hercules.  If the demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant to maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent creditor, who is seldom released from prison until he has signed a discharge of the whole debt.  And these vices are mixed with a puerile superstition which disgraces their understanding.  They listen with confidence to the productions of haruspices, who pretend to read in the entrails of victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and this superstition is observed among those very sceptics who impiously deny or doubt the existence of a celestial power.”

Such, in the latter days of the empire, was the leading class at Rome, and probably also in the cities which aped the fashions of the capital.  Frivolity and luxury loosened all the ties of society.  They were bound up in themselves, and had no care for the people except as they might extract more money from them.

As for the miserable class whom the patricians oppressed, their condition became worse every day from the accession of the Emperors.  The plebeians had ever disdained those arts which now occupied the middle classes; these were intrusted to slaves.  Originally, they employed themselves upon the lands which had been obtained by conquest; but these lands were gradually absorbed or usurped by the large proprietors.  The small farmers, oppressed with debt and usury, parted with their lands to their wealthy creditors.  Even in the time of Cicero, it was computed that there were only about two thousand citizens possessed of independent property.  These two thousand persons owned the world; the rest were dependent and powerless, and would have perished but for largesses.  Monthly distributions of corn were converted into daily allowance for bread.  The people were amused with games and festivals, fed like slaves, and of course lost at last even the semblance of manliness and independence.  They loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance; they spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery; they expired in wretched apartments without attracting the attention of government; pestilence, famine, and squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been annihilated but for constant accession to their numbers from the provinces.

In the busy streets of Rome might be seen adventurers from all parts of the world, disgraced by all the various vices of their respective countries.  They had no education, and but small religious advantages; they were held in terror by both priests and nobles,—­the priest terrifying them with Egyptian sorceries, the nobles crushing them by iron weight; like lazzaroni, they lived in the streets, or were crowded into filthy tenements; a gladiatorial show delighted them, but