f society, in which they learned the prudential habits of small
proprietors, and escape not only from the eye of history but even of
antiquarian research."[45]

This constant tendency of wealth, in the later periods of the Roman
empire, to accumulate in the hands of the great capitalists, accompanied
by the progressive deterioration of the condition of the middle and
working classes, is amply proved and forcibly illustrated by Sismondi,
in his admirable work on the Decline of the Roman Empire. "During the
long peace," says he, "which followed the victories of Trajan and Marcus
Aurelius, those colossal fortunes were accumulated, which, according to
Pliny, ruined Italy and the empire.[46] A single proprietor, by degrees,
came to buy up whole provinces, the conquest of which had in former days
furnished the occasion of many triumphs to the generals of the Republic.
While this huge capitalist was amassing riches, wholly disproportioned
to the capacity of man, the _once numerous and respectable, but now
beggared, middle class, disappeared from the face of the earth_. In
districts where so many brave and industrious citizens were to be seen
in former times, alike ready to defend or cultivate their fields, were
to be found nothing but slaves, who rapidly declined in number as the
fields came to be exclusively devoted to pasturage. The fertile plains
of Italy ceased to nourish its inhabitants; Rome depended entirely for
its subsistence on the harvests which its fleets brought it from Sicily,
Africa, and Egypt. From the capital to the farthest extremity of the
provinces, _depopulation and misery in the country coexisted with
enormous wealth an the towns_. From this cause the impossibility of
recruiting the legions with native Romans was experienced even in the
time of Marcus Aurelius. In his war against the Quadi and the
Marcomanni, which had been preceded by a long peace, he was obliged to
recruit the legions with the slaves and robbers of Rome."[47] It is
impossible to give a stronger proof of the extent to which this enormous
evil of the vast fortunes accumulated in the towns, and the entire ruin
of industry in the country, had gone in the last days of the empire,
than is to be found in the fact already mentioned, that when Rome was
taken by Alaric, in the year 404 after Christ, while Italy could furnish
no force to resist the invaders, the capital itself contained seventeen
hundred and sixty great families, many of them with