Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/291

IX retain the material means of development and prosperity, and to be adequately protected against the threatening attacks of barbarian enemies. Such claims created problems for the Roman statesman such as no had ever yet had to solve, and such as had never yet been dreamed of in the philosophy of the. And we must leave them for the present, for they have no direct connection with those internal causes of decay which are the subject of this chapter. I shall return to them in the next, and show how they arose as the result mainly of another set of disintegrating agencies, which we may call external; and in my last chapter I shall endeavour to explain how they were finally solved.

But if Aristotle's philosophy of political life did not embrace such problems as those of the Roman Empire, we may still ask how far the preventives which he prescribes for stasis had been adopted or could have been acted on at Rome. Did the senatorial government, that focus of all Roman experience and wisdom, seek to maintain a vigorous and comfortable middle class, and did they pay any attention to the problem of education, or endeavour to have the sons of Rome brought up in harmony with the best traditions and the growing needs of the State?

We saw that Rome won her position as a leading city in Italy by the steady obedience and devotion of her army of freeholders. The Servian census reveals beyond doubt a middle class such as Aristotle thought the best for a healthy state — a middle class of agriculturists; and this class