given them vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. The animal nature had grown
as strongly as the moral nature, and along with it the animal appetites;
and when appetites burst their traditionary restraints, and man in himself
has no other notion of enjoyment beyond bodily pleasure, he may pass by an
easy transition into a mere powerful brute. And thus it happened with the
higher classes at Rome after the destruction of Carthage. Italy had fallen
to them by natural and wholesome expansion; but from being sovereigns of
Italy, they became a race of imperial conquerors. Suddenly, and in
comparatively a few years after the one power was gone which could resist
them, they became the actual or virtual rulers of the entire circuit of
the Mediterranean. The south-east of Spain, the coast of France from the
Pyrenees to Nice, the north of Italy, Illyria and Greece, Sardinia,
Sicily, and the Greek Islands, the southern and western shores of Asia
Minor, were Roman provinces, governed directly under Roman magistrates. On
the African side Mauritania (Morocco) was still free. Numidia (the modern
Algeria) retained its native dynasty, but was a Roman dependency. The
Carthaginian dominions, Tunis and Tripoli, had been annexed to the Empire.
The interior of Asia Minor up to the Euphrates, with Syria and Egypt, were
under sovereigns called Allies, but, like the native princes in India,
subject to a Roman protectorate. Over this enormous territory, rich with
the accumulated treasures of centuries, and inhabited by thriving,
industrious races, the energetic Roman men of business had spread and
settled themselves, gathering into their hands the trade, the financial
administration, the entire commercial control of the Mediterranean basin.
They had been trained in thrift and economy, in abhorrence of debt, in
strictest habits of close and careful management. Their frugal education,
their early lessons in the value of money, good and excellent as those
lessons were, led them, as a matter of course, to turn to account their
extraordinary opportunities. Governors with their staffs, permanent
officials, contractors for the revenue, negotiators, bill-brokers,