In vain does Mark Antony
desert the movement, rally Egypt and the barbaric East, and seek
to transfer the seat of empire from the Tiber to the banks of the
Nile or the Orontes; plebeian and imperial Rome wins a final
victory at Actium, and definitively secures the empire of the
civilized world to the West.
Thus far the developments were normal, and advanced civilization.
But Rome still retained the barbaric element of slavery in her
bosom, and had conquered more barbaric nations than she had
assimilated. These nations she at first governed as tributary
states, with their own constitutions and national chiefs;
afterwards as Roman provinces, by her own proconsuls and prefects.
When the emperors threw open the gates of the city to the
provincials, and conceded them the rights and privileges of Roman
citizens, they introduced not only a foreign element into the
state, destitute of Roman patriotism, but the barbaric and
despotic elements retained by the conquered nations as yet only
partially assimilated. These elements became germs of
anti-republican developments, rather of corruptions, and prepared
the downfall of the empire. Doubtless these corruptions might
have been arrested, and would have been, if Roman patriotism had
survived the changes effected in the Roman population by the
concession of Roman citizenship to provincials; but it did not,
and they were favored as time went on by the emperors themselves,
and more especially by Dioclesian, a real barbarian, who hated
Rome, and by Constantine, surnamed the Great, a real despot, who
converted the empire from a republican to a despotic empire.
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