. Industrial slavery, indifference to parenthood, and
addiction to club-life were certainly three of the main causes, unless
we prefer to regard the two last as symptoms of hopelessness about the
future.

The same disease fell upon Italy, and was coincident not with the
murderous war against Hannibal and the subsequent campaigns, costly
though they were, in Spain, Syria, and Macedonia, but with the
Hellenisation of social life. Lucan, under Nero, complains that the
towns have lost more than half their inhabitants, and that the
country-side lies waste. Under Titus it was estimated that, whereas
Italy under the Republic could raise nearly 800,000 soldiers, that
number was now reduced by one-half. Marcus Aurelius planted a large
tribe of Marcomanni on unoccupied land in Italy. In the fourth century
Bologna, Modena, Piacenza, and many other towns in North Italy were in
ruins. The land of the Volscians and Aequians, once densely populated,
was a desert even in Livy's time. Samnium remained the wilderness that
Sulla had left it; and Apulia was a lonely sheep-walk.

The causes of this depopulation have been often discussed, both in
antiquity and in our own day. Slavery, infanticide, celibacy, wars and
massacres, large estates, and pestilence have all been named as causes;
but I am inclined to think that all these influences together are
insufficient to account for so rapid a decline. The toll of war was
lighter by far than in periods when the population was rising;
infectious disease (unless we suppose, as some have suggested, that
malaria became for the first time endemic under the Roman domination)
invaded the empire in occasional and destructive epidemics, but a
healthy population recovers from pestilence, as from war, with great
rapidity. The large grazing ranches displaced farms because corn-growing
in Italy was unprofitable, but there was a large supply of grain from
Sicily, Africa, and other districts. Slavery undoubtedly accounts for a
great deal. This institution is excessively wasteful of human life; it
is never possible to keep up the numbers of slaves without slave-hunting
in the countries from which they come. And we must remember that ancient
civilisation was almost entirely urban. The barbarians found ample waste
lands between the towns, which they did not as a rule care to visit,
probably because those who did so soon fell victims to microbic
diseases. The sanitary condition of ancient cities was better than i