ence to make money that we see to-day
setting all classes beside themselves, from noble to day-labourer; the
_ambitio_ that appeared to the ancients to animate so frantically
even the classes that ought to have been most immune, was what we call
_getting there_--the craze to rise at any cost to a condition higher
than that in which one was born, which so many writers, moralists,
statesmen, judge, rightly or wrongly, to be one of the most dangerous
maladies of the modern world. _Luxuria_ was the desire to augment
personal conveniences, luxuries, pleasures--the same passion that
stirs Europe and America to-day from top to bottom, in city and
country. Without doubt, wealth grew in ancient Rome and grows to-day;
men were bent on making money in the last two centuries of the
Republic, and to-day they rush headlong into the delirious struggle
for gold; for reasons and motives, however, and with arms and
accoutrements, far diverse.

As I have already said, ancient civilisation was narrower, poorer,
and more ignorant; it did not hold under its victorious foot the whole
earth; it did not possess the formidable instruments with which we
exploit the forces and the resources of nature: but the treasures of
precious metals transported to Italy from conquered and subjugated
countries; the lands, the mines, the forests, belonging to such
countries, confiscated by Rome and given or rented to Italians; the
tributes imposed on the vanquished, and the collection of them; the
abundance of slaves,--all these then offered to the Romans and to the
Italians so many occasions to grow rich quickly; just as the gigantic
economic progress of the modern world offers similar opportunities
to-day to all the peoples that, by geographical position, historical
tradition, or vigorous culture and innate energy, know how to excel
in industry, in agriculture, and in trade. Especially from the Second
Punic War on, in all classes, there followed--anxious for a life more
affluent and brilliant--generations the more incited to follow the
examples that emanated from the great metropolises of the Orient,
particularly Alexandria, which was for the Romans of the Republic what
Paris is for us to-day. This movement, spontaneous, regular, natural,
was every now and then violently accelerated by the conquest of
a great Oriental state. One observes, after each one of the great
annexations of Oriental lands, a more intense delirium of luxury and
pleasure: the first time