process of a society gradually going to pieces under the dissolving
influence of its own vices which lasted almost without interruption till
nothing was left for Rome except the fire and sword of barbaric
invasions. She saw not only her glories but also her virtues "star by
star expire." The old heroism, the old beliefs, the old manliness and
simplicity, were dead and gone; they had been succeeded by prostration
and superstition by luxury and lust.

"There is the moral of all human tales,
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First freedom, and then glory; when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption,--barbarism at last:
And history, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page; 'tis better written here
Where gorgeous tyranny hath thus amassed
All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask."

The mere elements of society at Rome during this period were very
unpromising. It was a mixture of extremes. There was no middle class. At
the head of it was an emperor, often deified in his lifetime, and
separated from even the noblest of the senators by a distance of
immeasurable superiority. He, was, in the startling language of Gibbon,
at once "a priest, an atheist, and a god." [8] Surrounding his person and
forming his court were usually those of the nobility who were the most
absolutely degraded by their vices, their flatteries, or their abject
subservience. But even these men were not commonly the repositories of
political power. The people of the greatest influence were the freedmen
of the emperors--men who had been slaves, Egyptians and Bithynians who
had come to Rome with bored ears and with chalk on their naked feet to