questions; but even thus early the money of foreign dynasts found
its way to the senators of Rome. Timarchus, the envoy of Antiochus
Epiphanes king of Syria (590), is mentioned as the first who
attempted with success to bribe the Roman senate; the bestowal of
presents from foreign kings on influential senators soon became so
common, that surprise was excited when Scipio Aemilianus cast into
the military chest the gifts from the king of Syria which reached
him in camp before Numantia. The ancient principle, that rule was
its own sole reward and that such rule was as much a duty and a
burden as a privilege and a benefit, was allowed to fall wholly into
abeyance. Thus there arose the new state-economy, which turned its
eyes away from the taxation of the burgesses, but regarded the body
of subjects, on the other hand, as a profitable possession of the
community, which it partly worked out for the public benefit, partly
handed over to be worked out by the burgesses. Not only was free
scope allowed with criminal indulgence to the unscrupulous greed of
the Roman merchant in the provincial administration, but even the
commercial rivals who were disagreeable to him were cleared away by
the armies of the state, and the most glorious cities of neighbouring
lands were sacrificed, not to the barbarism of the lust of power, but
to the far more horrible barbarism of speculation. By the ruin of
the earlier military organization, which certainly imposed heavy
burdens on the burgesses, the state, which was solely dependent in
the last resort on its military superiority, undermined its own
support. The fleet was allowed to go to ruin; the system of land
warfare fell into the most incredible decay. The duty of guarding
the Asiatic and African frontiers was devolved on the subjects; and
what could not be so devolved, such as the defence of the frontier
in Italy, Macedonia, and Spain, was managed after the most wretched
fashion. The better classes began to disappear so much from the