chief remained, and the result was inevitable. Three out of four of the Roman emperors perished by violence, and each mutiny or assassination or civil war was the occasion for fresh degradation of the citizens. The Italian nation, which under happier auspices would have been the centre from which liberty and self-government might spread over the civilised world, only led the way in abasement and servility. Gibbon has summed up for us the story of its fate in words which may be repeated with little change for each of the nations which lay beneath the shadow of the Roman Empire. "The forms of the constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject slavery, were abolished by time or violence; the Italians alternately lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereigns whom they detested or despised; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of military license, capricious despotism, and elaborate oppression."[1] It has even been argued, though the argument is to my mind far from convincing, that the fragments of liberty which Augustus retained cost more than they were worth in friction and inconvenience, and that if the ideas of freedom and self-government, the only political ideas worth having, were in truth absolutely beyond realisation in practice for the world as it was, then the more outspoken despotism of Julius or of Diocletian was the lesser of the two evils. Even so, such a plea serves but to extenuate. The work of Cæsar may be excused as a miserable necessity; it
- ↑ Gibbon, ch. 36.
