“Wheresoever the Roman conquers he inhabits,” was a very just observation of Seneca.  Colonies, composed for the most part of veteran soldiers, were settled throughout the empire.  Rich and prosperous cities, adorned with magnificent temples and baths and other public buildings, demonstrated at once the magnificence and majesty of the Roman system.  In Britain, York was the seat of government.  London was already enriched by commerce, and Bath was celebrated for the salutary effects of its medicinal waters.

All the great cities were connected with each other, and with the capital, by the public highway, which, issuing from the Forum of Rome, traversed Italy, pervaded the provinces, and was terminated only by the frontiers of the empire.  This great chain of communications ran in a direct line from city to city, and in its construction the Roman engineers snowed little respect for the obstacles, either of nature or of private property.  Mountains were perforated and bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid streams.  The middle part of the road, raised into a terrace which commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several strata of sand, gravel, and cement, and was paved with granite or large stones.  Distances were accurately computed by milestones, and the establishment of post-houses, at a distance of five or six miles, enabled a citizen to travel with ease a hundred miles a day along the Roman roads.

This freedom of intercourse, which was established throughout the Roman world, while it extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life.  Rude barbarians of Gaul laid aside their arms for the more peaceful pursuits of agriculture.  The cultivation of the earth produced abundance in every portion of the empire, and accidental scarcity in any single province was immediately relieved by the plentifulness of its more fortunate neighbours.  Since the productions of nature are the materials of art, this flourishing condition of agriculture laid the foundation of manufactures, which provided the luxurious Roman with those refinements of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour which his tastes demanded.  Commerce flourished, and the products of Egypt and the East were poured out in the lap of Rome.

Though there still existed within the body of the Roman Empire an unhappy condition of men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits of society, the position of a slave was greatly improved in the progress of Roman development.  The power of life and death was taken from his master’s hands and vested in the magistrate, to whom he had a right to appeal against intolerable treatment.  These magistrates exercised the authority of the emperor and the senate in every quarter of the empire, inflexibly maintaining in their administration, as in the case of military government, the use of the Latin tongue.  Greek was the natural idiom of science, Latin that of government.

II.—­The Seeds of Dissolution