more inclined than the people of this country are now to seek pleasure
abroad and in public. The climate, too, mild and genial nearly all the
year, favored this. Then they were not interested, as men are now, in
the pursuits and avocations of private industry. The people of Rome were
not a community of merchants, manufacturers, and citizens, enriching
themselves, and adding to the comforts and enjoyments of the rest of
mankind by the products of their labor. They were supported, in a great
measure, by the proceeds of the tribute of foreign provinces, and by the
plunder taken by the generals in the name of the state in foreign wars.
From the same source, too--foreign conquest--captives were brought home,
to be trained as gladiators to amuse them with their combats, and
statues and paintings to ornament the public buildings of the city. In
the same manner, large quantities of corn, which had been taken in the
provinces, were often distributed at Rome. And sometimes even land
itself, in large tracts, which had been confiscated by the state, or
otherwise taken from the original possessors, was divided among the
people. The laws enacted from time to time for this purpose were called
Agrarian laws; and the phrase afterward passed into a sort of proverb,
inasmuch as plans proposed in modern times for conciliating the favor of
the populace by sharing among them property belonging to the state or to
the rich, are designated by the name of _Agrarianism_.

[Sidenote: Government of Rome.]
[Sidenote: Its foreign policy.]

Thus Rome was a city supported, in a great measure, by the fruits of its
conquests, that is, in a certain sense, by plunder. It was a vast
community most efficiently and admirably organized for this purpose; and
yet it would not be perfectly just to designate the people simply as a
band of robbers. They rendered, in some sense, an equivalent for what