We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east, the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians, the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the Danube.[623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles, Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms. But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi, acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of the best cause.