Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/344

320 dependencies you must have more than machinery, — you must have also conscience and self-restraint. The Romans might extend their civic government and law, but they could not extend their ancient civic virtues, to the government of an empire.

The story of this failure of the Republican Empire is familiar enough; I can only here allude to the more obvious causes of it. The governors of provinces began to enrich themselves by using their imperium to rob their subjects; and there was no way found of keeping them under proper control. The Senate, admirable in the management of the details of war and diplomacy, could discover no effective check on the rapacity of the governors, and after a time they ceased to have any real desire to do so. There was no real guarantee that the local institutions, or even the lives and the property, of the subject peoples would be respected by the Roman governor; and as a matter of fact they were often treated with the utmost contempt. And in all cases, whether the governor were just or unjust, whether or no he adhered to the terms on which local government had been granted to the cities of his province, the life of the City-State, which had been so long decaying, was now finally crushed out under the pressure of the Roman imperium. True loyalty towards that imperium could not grow up under such a system. There was no solid and well-meaning government to which