undone by an irreparable dissolution, a nation that not only had
conquered, but was to govern for ages, an immense empire. In this
conception of corruption there is a contradiction that conceals a
great universal problem.

Stimulated by this contradiction, and by the desire of solving it, to
study more attentively the facts cited by the ancients as examples of
corruption, I have looked about to see if in the contemporary world
I could not find some things that resembled it, and so make myself
understand it. The prospect seemed difficult, because modern men are
persuaded that they are models of all the virtues. Who could think to
find in them even traces of the famous Roman corruption? In the modern
world to-day are the abominable orgies carried on for which the Rome
of the Cæsars was notorious? Are there to-day Neros and Elagabaluses?
He who studies the ancient sources, however, with but a little of the
critical spirit, is easily convinced that we have made for ourselves
out of the much-famed corruption and Roman luxury a notion highly
romantic and exaggerated. We need not delude ourselves: Rome, even in
the times of its greatest splendour, was poor in comparison with the
modern world; even in the second century after Christ, when it stood
as metropolis at the head of an immense empire, Rome was smaller,
less wealthy, less imposing, than a great metropolis of Europe or
of America. Some sumptuous public edifices, beautiful private
houses--that is all the splendour of the metropolis of the empire.
He who goes to the Palatine may to-day refigure for himself, from the
so-called House of Livia, the house of a rich Roman family of the
time of Augustus, and convince himself that a well-to-do middle-class
family would hardly occupy such a house to-day.

Moreover, the palaces of the Cæsars on the Palatine are a grandiose