The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    peror, and forced the elevation of Claudius. The emperors also conciliated the wealthy, who, as a body, were not unwill- ing to see a few of their number, the very wealthiest, sacri- ficed to the emperor’s rapacity, if thereby the rest were ren- dered safe. In self-defence, to allay the discontent beneath them, they had to make largesses to the people. The benefac- tions of these great men, and also of the state, in Rome itself and in some other large provincial cities, tended to the slug- gardising and impoverishment of the people. Only the city-in- habitants were the receivers of favours, in the shape of doles of cheap wine and of free corn, at last even of bread, along with exhibitions of games and of music, the use of hospitals, baths, libraries. Thus not only to the rich but to the poor luxuries became necessaries, games being ranked with bread.*° Their enormous consumption exhausted the resources of many a clime.*4 The city of Rome was a great parasite, sucking the juices of the immense body it had fastened itself upon. Its people shared the fate of parasites — degeneration.*? The corn they fed upon was brought by sea in great quantities from distant provinces where on large estates by slave labour it was produced cheapest. ‘The small Italian farmers could not compete: they sold their farms and flocked to the cities ; *7* and the consolidated estates were, as already stated, also culti- vated by slave-gangs, and at last emptied even of these and given over to large herds of cattle, sheep, or swine, tended by a few herdsmen. ‘The transformation had begun under the republic. Appian describes the process: how the rich got possession of the public lands, and bought up or seized more from their impoverished neighbours, and worked them with slaves because these were not drafted off into the army, as were the farmers; and how the slaves multiplied, while the farmers 40“ Panem et circenses,” Juvenal, X. 81. 41 Cf, Seneca: “ Luxuria, terrarum marisque vastatrix,” Epist., 95, 19. 42 Cf, E. Ray Lankester: “Any new set of conditions occurring to an animal which render its food and safety very easily attained, seem to lead as a rule to degeneration; just as an active healthy man sometimes de- generates when he becomes suddenly possessed of a fortune; or as Rome degenerated when possessed of the riches of the ancient world. The habit of parasitism clearly acts upon animal organisation in this way.” Article on Degeneration in The Advancement of Science, London, 1890, p. 27. i i 42a Cf. Novel. Constitut. Justin., 80 Praefatio.