Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/207

 Extension of Roman Dominion and its Results 143 younger children alone, saw the family scattered and drifting away from the little farm, till it was left forsaken. 225. Influx to the Cities. Too often as the returning soldier approached the spot where he was born he no longer found the house that had sheltered him in childhood. His family was gone, and his little farm, sold for debt, had been bought up by some wealthy Roman of the city. He cursed the rich men who had got possession of his land, and wandered up to the great city to look for free grain from the government, to enjoy the games and circuses, and to increase the poor class already there. 226. The Difficulties confronting Rome after she had gained World Power. The failure of the Roman Senate to organize a successful government for the empire they had conquered had brought the whole world of Mediterranean civilization danger- ously near destruction. In the European background beyond the Alpine frontiers there were rumblings of vast movements among the Northern barbarians, threatening to descend as of old and completely overwhelm the civilization which for over three thousand years had been slowly built up by Orientals and Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean world. We stand at the point where the civilization of the Hellenistic world began to decline, after the destruction of Carthage and Corinth (146 B.C.). We are now to watch the Roman people struggling with three difficult and dangerous problems at the same time : first, the deadly internal hostility which we have seen growing up between rich and poor ; second, the question of organ- izing a successful Roman government of the Mediterranean world while the dangerous internal struggle was going on ; and third, in the midst of these grave responsibilities, the invasions of the bar- barian hordes of the North. In spite of all these threatening dan- gers we shall see Rome gaining the needed organization which enabled it to hurl back the barbarians, to hold the northern frontiers for five hundred years, and thus to shield the civilization which had cost mankind so many centuries of slow progress the civilization which, because it was so preserved by the Roman Empire, has become our own inheritance today.