prosperity, if it is long and lasting, never fails to introduce luxury and ambition into this republic, which infallibly produce the ruin of the most flourishing states. Luxury, to furnish the expences, which daily become greater and more enormous, soon degenerates into avarice, and is forced to have recourse to injustice and rapine; and ambition, to compass its ends, omits nothing that may gain the favour of the people, flattery, complaisance, bribery and corruption. Hence it follows, that the multitude, on one side provoked by the unjust exactions of the rich, and on the other corrupted and grown insolent by the flatteries and bribes of the ambitious, consult only their own passions and caprice in public debates, refuse to give ear to their first magistrates, and to submit to their authority; and, assuming the specious name of liberty and democracy, give themselves up to an unlimited licentiousness, and entirely shake off the yoke of the laws. Accustomed to live upon the substance of others, and fatten in ease and idleness, if they find a head who is not in a condition to supply all their wants of himself, but, being bold and enterprising, seems capable of gratifying their desires by other expedients, they adhere to him, and support and advance him. Hence arise seditions, murders, banishments, proscriptions, new divisions of lands, and disannulling of debts'; till at last, somebody, more powerful and mighty than any of the rest, starts up, who assumes the whole authority to himself, and becomes sole master of the government. Thus the too eager desire of liberty, or to speak more properly, the abuse the people make of it, ends in the loss of that very liberty, and the establishment of a new sovereign and arbitrary government.

Such were in short the revolutions, which changed the face and nature of the Roman republic, as it now remains for us to shew.

CHAP.

CHAP. II.

THE CHANGE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC INTO A MONARCHY.

WHAT Polybius had foreseen came to pass, in the manner and for the reasons he had observed. It was the very grandeur and prosperity of Rome which occasioned the loss of its liberty. From the time that the Roman republic was arrived at that height of glory to which the courage and virtue of its ancient generals and magistrates had raised it, it began to decline, at first by imperceptible degrees; but afterwards by such as were more obvious, and ended at last in the open violation of the ancient maxims of the government and the infraction of the fundamental laws of the state.

When the republic, [o] says Sallust, had raised itself by labour and justice; when mighty kings had been conquered in war, and fierce nations and nu-. merous people subdued by force; when Carthage the rival of Rome was entirely conquered, and all, in a word, made subject to the Roman empire, both by sea and land, there arose a surprising revolution in the whole body of the state. Those whom neither labour, nor dangers, nor so many adversities could ever conquer, were subdued by the softness of repose, and the allurements of plenty and prosperity. Avarice and ambition, the fatal springs of every evil, increased in proportion to the power of Rome. Avarice banished integrity, probity, and every other virtue from the republic, and substituted in their place pride and pomp, a contempt of religion, and a shameful commerce which exposed every thing to sale; and ambition in its turn introduced dissimulation, fraud and treachery, and soon after violence, cruelty and murder.

It was thus, according to the fine thought of Juvenál, that luxury, a more fatal and cruel scourge than [o] Sallust. in Bello Catilin. N

VOL. III.

war,

war, ravaged the Roman empire, and revenged the conquered world.

Serior armis

Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.

It remains therefore only to show how just the conjectures were which Polybius wisely formed, concerning the change which he foresaw would happen in the republic, to give a particular account of the principal causes which brought on that revolution, as we find them either in contemporary authors, or in such as wrote soon after that great event. By this we shall clearly see the surprising difference there was betwixt the first ages of the Roman republic, and those which preceded its ruin, and have at the same time a more perfect idea of all the states through which it passed.

RICHES, ATTENDED WITH LUXURY IN BUILDING, FURNITURE, DIET, &c.

I shall not here repeat what I have already observed in the beginning of this volume, concerning the noble disinterestedness of the Romans, and their esteem of poverty, simplicity, frugality and modesty. Virtues at that time so common, and so generally practised, that they were less ascribed to the particular merit of some citizens, than to the genius of the nation, and the happy character of those early ages; but, at the same time, virtues so sublime, and carried to so high a point of perfection, that in the latter ages of the republic, they passed for fables and fictious, so remote were they from the taste that then prevailed, and seemed so far superior to human weakness.

[p From the time that riches were had in honour, and became the only introduction to offices, power, and glory, virtue was no longer held in esteem. Poverty was looked upon as a reproach, and innocence

[p] Postquam divitiæ honori esse cœperunt, & eas gloria, imperium, potentia sequebatur; hebescere virtus, paupertas probre haberi, inno

centia pro malevolentiâ duci cœpit. Igitur ex divitiis juventutem luxuria atque avaritia, cum superbia invasere. Sallust. in Bello. Jugurth.

of

of manners as the effect of a melancholy humour. And the fruit of these riches was luxury, avarice and pride.

The epocha of this change of disposition amongst the Romans, was that of the grandeur of the empire.

[9] The first Scipio laid the sure foundation of their future greatness; the last by his conquests, opened the door to luxury. From the time that Carthage, which kept Rome in exercise by disputing the empire with it, was entirely destroyed, the declension of manners proceeded no longer by slow degrees, but was sudden and precipitate. Virtue immediately gave way to vice, the ancient discipline to looseness of manners, and the active laborious life, to idleness and pleasure.

And whereas the ancient Romans strove rather to honour the gods by piety than magnificence [r] colebantur religiones piè magis quàm magnificè, the immense riches, which were the fruits of their later conquests, were employed in raising lofty temples to the gods, and magnificent buildings for the decoration and embellishment of Rome.

It is difficult, not to say impossible, but what is made the object of admiration, must sooner or later become the taste of private persons. Thus an historian observes, that from the time they began to use marble in the building of temples, and raised theatres and porticos, the luxury of private persons followed close at the heels of the public magnificence, [s] publicamque magnificentiam secuta privata luxuria est. The madness for building was carried to a prodigious excess, and mere private men made it their diversion, and, at the same time, their glory, to lavish away vast sums of money in levelling mountains, and filling up seas.

Their luxury was the same in every other particular, and it was the army that returned victorious out of Asia, which introduced it into Rome, or at least made it far more cominon there than it had been be

[9] Vell. Paterc. lib. ii. n. 1. [r] Liv. lib. iii. n. 57.

[s] Vell. Paterc. lib. ii. n. 1. Sallust. in Bello Catilin.

N 2

fore.

fore. [t] Livy enumerates the several kinds of rich furniture, which from that time came into use the comedians, singing women, and players upon instruments, began then also to make part of the entertainment at meals; the meals themselves no longer retained the air of the ancient simplicity, but were made at a great expence, and with a large apparatus. A cook, who was looked upon by the ancients as a vile slave, was then held in esteem and honour, as an officer not to be dispensed with, and what before had been a low employment, became an art very much studied and esteemed. And yet all this was nothing in comparison of the excess they afterwards fell into.

[u] Cato the Censor took a deal of pains to lay before the senate the fatal consequences of the luxury, which in his time began to be introduced into the republic. Seeing the great progress of their arms in Greece and Asia, provinces abounding with the dangerous baits and allurements of every kind of pleasure, and that the Romans began to lay hands upon the treasures of kings; "I fear," [x] said he, "that we "shall become the slaves of those riches, instead of "their masters; and that the conquered nations will

conquer us in their turn, by communicating their "vices to us." His apprehensions were not imaginary, and all that he had foretold, came afterwards to pass.

TASTE FOR STATUES, PICTURES, &C.

[y] It was the conquest of Syracuse which produced this unhappy effect; though the statues and pictures, which that great city was filled with, were spoils justly acquired by the right of war, and Marcellus. was so cautious as to carry off but a small number of

[t] Lib. xxxix. n. 6. [u] Lib. xxxiv. n. 4.

[x] Hæc ego, quo melior lætiorque in dies fortuna reipublicæ est, imperiumque crescit ; & jam in Græciam Asiamque transcendimus, omnibus libidinum illecebris repletas & regias etiam attractamus ga

zas; eo plus horreo, ne illæ magis res nos ceperint, quàm nos illas.

[y] Hostium quidem illa spolia & parta belli jure: ceterùm inde primum mirandi græcarum artium opera, licentiæque hinc sacra profanaque omnia vulgò spoliandi, factum est. Lib. xxv. n. 40.

them,