As I have already said, ancient civilisation was narrower, poorer, and more ignorant; it did not hold under its victorious foot the whole earth; it did not possess the formidable instruments with which we exploit the forces and the resources of nature:  but the treasures of precious metals transported to Italy from conquered and subjugated countries; the lands, the mines, the forests, belonging to such countries, confiscated by Rome and given or rented to Italians; the tributes imposed on the vanquished, and the collection of them; the abundance of slaves,—­all these then offered to the Romans and to the Italians so many occasions to grow rich quickly; just as the gigantic economic progress of the modern world offers similar opportunities to-day to all the peoples that, by geographical position, historical tradition, or vigorous culture and innate energy, know how to excel in industry, in agriculture, and in trade.  Especially from the Second Punic War on, in all classes, there followed—­anxious for a life more affluent and brilliant—­generations the more incited to follow the examples that emanated from the great metropolises of the Orient, particularly Alexandria, which was for the Romans of the Republic what Paris is for us to-day.  This movement, spontaneous, regular, natural, was every now and then violently accelerated by the conquest of a great Oriental state.  One observes, after each one of the great annexations of Oriental lands, a more intense delirium of luxury and pleasure:  the first time, after the acquisition of the kingdom of Pergamus, through a kind of contagion communicated by the sumptuous furniture of King Attalus, which was sold at auction and scattered among the wealthy houses of Italy to excite the still simple desires and the yet sluggish imaginations of the Italians; the second time, after the conquest of Pontus and of Syria, made by Lucullus and by Pompey; finally, the third time, after the conquest of Egypt made by Augustus, when the influence of that land—­the France of the ancient world—­so actively invaded Italy that no social force could longer resist it.

In this way, partly by natural, gradual, almost imperceptible diffusion, partly by violent crises, we see the mania for luxury and the appetite for pleasure beginning, growing, becoming aggravated from generation to generation in all Roman society, for two centuries, changing the mentality and morality of the people; we see the institutions and public policy being altered; all Roman history a-making under the action of this force, formidable and immanent in the whole nation.  It breaks down all obstacles confronting it—­the forces of traditions, laws, institutions, interests of classes, opposition of parties, the efforts of thinking men.  The historical aristocracy becomes impoverished and weak; before it rise to power the millionaires, the parvenus, the great capitalists, enriched in the provinces.  A part of the nobility, after having long despised them, sets itself to fraternise