Eastern lands. But some of the economic effects of the new influences
claim our immediate attention, for we are engaged in the study of the
beginnings of an economic revolution, and an analysis must therefore be
attempted of some of the most pressing needs and some of the keenest
desires which were awakened by Hellenism, either in the purer dress
which old Greece had given it or in the more gorgeous raiment which it
had assumed during its sojourn in the East.

A tendency to treat the city as the home, the country only as a means of
refreshment and a sphere of elegant retirement during that portion of
the year when the excitement of the urban season, its business and its
pleasure, were suspended, began to be a marked feature of the life of
the upper classes. The man of affairs and the man of high finance were
both compelled to have their domicile in the town, and, if agriculture
was still the staple or the supplement of their wealth, the needs of the
estate had to be left to the supervision of the resident bailiff.[19]
This concentration of the upper classes in the city necessarily entailed
a great advance in the price and rental of house property within the
walls. It is true that the reckless prices paid for houses, especially
for country villas, by the grandees and millionaires of the next
generation,[20] had not yet been reached; but the indications with which
we are furnished of the general rise of prices for everything in Rome
that could be deemed desirable by a cultivated taste,[21] show that the
better class of house property must already have yielded large returns,
whether it were sold or let, and we know that poor scions of the
nobility, if business or pleasure induced them to spend a portion of the
year in Rome, had soon to climb the stairs of flats or lodgings.[22] The
pressure for room led to the piling of storey on storey. On The roof of
old houses new chambers were raised, which could be reached by an
outside stair, and either served to accommodate the increased retinue of