to counteract the centrifugalism that simply did not care.  The empire held together, because Augustus and Tiberius had created a centripetalism in the provinces; and these continued in the main through it all to enjoy the good government the first two emperors had made a tradition in them, and felt but little the hands of the fools or madmen reigning in Rome.  And then, blood from the provinces was always flowing into Rome itself; particularly in the Flavian time; and supplied or fed a new centripetalism there which righted things in the next half-cycle.  It was Rome, not the provinces, that Nero and Caligula represented in their day; the time was transitional; you may call Otho and Vitellius the first bungling shots of the provinces at having a hand in things at the center; wholesome Vespasian was their first representative emperor:  Nerva and those that followed him represented equally the provinces and a regenerated Rome.—­This tells you what Nero’s Rome was, and how it came to tolerate Nero; when Vitellius came in with his band of ruffians from the Rhine, and the streets flowed with blood day after day, the places of low resort were as full as ever through it all; while carnage reigned in the forums, riotous vice reigned within doors.

But look outside of Rome, and the picture is very different.  The Spaniard, Gaul, Illyrian, Asiatic and the rest, were enjoying the Roman Peace.  There was progress; if not at the center, everywhere between that and the periphery of civilization.  Life, even in Italy (in the country parts) was growing steadily more cultured, serious, and dignified; and in all remote regions was assimilating its standards to the best in Italy.  From the Scottish Lowlands to the Cataracts of the Nile a single people was coming into being; it was a wide and well-tilled field in which incarnate souls might grow.  The satirists make lurid pictures of the evils Rome; and the evils were there, with perhaps not much to counter-balance them, in Rome. Paris has been latterly the capital of civilization; and one of its phases as such has been to be the capital of the seven deadly sins.  The sins are or were there:  Paris provided for the sinners of the world, in her capacity of world-metropolis; just as she provided for the artists, the litteratuers, and so on.  Foolish people drew from that the conclusion that therefore Frenchmen were more wicked than other people:  whereas in truth the life of provincial France all along has probably been among the soundest of any.  So we must offset Martial’s and Juvenal’s pictures of the calm and gracious life in the country:  virtuous life, often, with quiet striving after usefulness and the higher things.  He reveals to us, in the last quarter of the century, interiors in northern Italy, by Lake Como; you should have found the like anywhere in the empire.  And where, since Rome fell, shall you come on a century in which Britain, Gaul, Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Asia and Africa, enjoyed a Roman or any kind of peace?  Be not deceived:  there has been no such success in Europe since as the empire that Augustus the Initiate made, and for which Tiberius his disciple was crucified.