e alike
detestable; where the sacerdotal order, the consular dignity, the
government of provinces, and even the cabinet of the prince, were seized
by that execrable race as their lawful prey; where nothing was sacred,
nothing safe from the hand of rapacity; where slaves were suborned, or
by their own malevolence excited against their masters; where freemen
betrayed their patrons, and he who had lived without an enemy died by
the treachery of a friend."

[Sidenote: Effects in the provinces. Free trade.]

[Sidenote: Intellectual advancements.]

But, though these were the consequences of the concentration of power
and wealth in the city of Rome, it was otherwise in the expanse of the
empire. The effect of Roman domination was the cessation of all the
little wars that had heretofore been waged between adjacent peoples.
They exchanged independence for peace. Moreover, and this, in the end,
was of the utmost importance to them all, unrestricted commerce ensued,
direct trade arising between all parts of the empire. The Mediterranean
nations were brought closer to each other, and became common inheritors
of such knowledge as was then in the world. Arts, sciences, improved
agriculture, spread among them; the most distant countries could boast
of noble roads, aqueducts, bridges, and great works of engineering. In
barbarous places, the legions that were intended as garrisons proved to
be foci of civilization. For the provinces, even the wickedness of Rome
was not without some good. From one quarter corn had to be brought; from
another, clothing; from another, luxuries; and Italy had to pay for it
all in coin. She had nothing to export in return. By this there was a
tendency to equalization of wealth in all parts of the empire, and a
perpetual movement of money. Nor was the advantage altogether material;
there were conjoined intellectual results of no little value.
Superstition and the amazing credulity of the old times disappeared. In
the first Punic War, Africa was looked upon as a land of monsters; it
had serpents large enough to stop armies, it had headless men. Sicily
had its Cyclops, giants, enchantresses; golden apples grew in Spain; the
mouth of Hell was on the shores of the Euxine. The marches of the
legions and the voyages of merchants made all these phantasms vanish.

[Sidenote: Disappearance of the Roman ethnical element.]

It was the necessary consequence of her military aggrandizement that the
ethnical element wh