[Sidenote: Disappearance of the Roman ethnical element.]
It was the necessary consequence of her military aggrandizement that the ethnical element which really constituted Rome should expire. A small nucleus of men had undertaken to conquer the Mediterranean world, and had succeeded. In doing this they had diffused themselves over an immense geographical surface, and necessarily became lost in the mass with which they mingled. On the other hand, the deterioration of Italy was insured by the slave system, and the ruin of Rome was accomplished before the barbarians touched it. Whoever inquires the cause of the fall of the Roman empire will find his answer in ascertaining what had become of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Roman conquest produces homogeneous thought,]
The extinction of prodigies and superstitious legends was occasioned by increased travel, through the merging of many separate nations into one great empire. Intellectual communication attends material communication. The spread of Roman influence around the borders of the Mediterranean produced a tendency to homogeneous thought eminently dangerous to the many forms of faith professed by so many different people.
[Sidenote: and revolutionizes religious ideas.]
After Tarquin was expelled the sacerdotal class became altogether subordinate to the military, whose whole history shows that they regarded religion as a mere state institution, without any kind of philosophical significance, and chiefly to be valued for the control it furnished over vulgar minds. It presented itself to them in the light of a branch of industry, from which profit might be made by those who practised it. They thought no more of concerning themselves individually about it than in taking an interest in any other branch of lucrative trade. As to any examination of its intellectual basis, they were not sophists, but soldiers, blindly following the prescribed institutions of their country with as little question as its military commands. For these reasons, throughout the time of the republic, and also under the early emperors, there never was much reluctance to the domestication of any kind of worship in Rome. Indeed, the gods of the conquered countries were established there to the gratification of the national vanity. From this commingling of worship in the city, and intercommunication of ideas in the provinces, the most important events arose.