people. The concentrated power of Julius Caesar, resting on his
own tremendous personality, showed that the days of Cincinnatus
and of Junius Brutus were past. The strength of Augustus rested
likewise in personality. The rising authority of later emperors
had its roots in the ineffectiveness of the mob, until it came
to pass that "the little finger of Constantine was thicker than
the loins of Augustus." This was due not to Constantine's
force, but to the continued reversal of selection among the
people over whom he ruled. The emperor, no longer the strong
man holding in check all lesser men and organizations, became
the creature of the mob; and "the mob, intoxicated with its own
work, worshipped him as divine." Doubtless the last emperor,
Augustulus Romulus, before the Goths threw him into the
scrap-heap of history, was regarded by the mob and himself as
the most god-like of the whole succession.

The Romans of the Republic might perhaps have made a history
very different. Had they held aloof from world-conquering
schemes Rome might have remained a republic, enduring even down
to our day. The seeds of Rome's fall lay not in race nor in
form of government, nor in wealth nor in senility, but in the
influences by which the best men were cut off from parenthood,
leaving its own weaker strains and strains of lower races to be
fathers of coming generations.

"The Roman Empire," says Professor Seely, "perished for want of
men." Even Julius Caesar notes the dire scarcity of men, while
at the same time there were people enough. The population
steadily grew; Rome was filling up like an overflowing marsh.
Men of a certain type were plenty, but self-reliant farmers,