Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/97

DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 61 ing the two centuries before the Christian era. Moreover, first the Greeks and then the Italians had displayed an increasing distaste for military service and an increasing fondness for lives of ease and luxury. It is significant that after the first century of the Christian era Italy furnished no more emperors; Rome's rulers henceforth came from the provinces. To her new acquisitions in the North and West, Rome, as we have seen, spread the benefits of classical civilization. This had raised those provinces to a higher state Apparent of culture than their previous tribal life, but it of°h?eariy had not led them as yet to create any new art or Empire literature, or any new industrial methods or political insti- tutions of their own. They merely dropped to a greater or less extent their previous ways and adopted to the best of their ability the arts and letters and institutions of the Greeks and Romans. This change, together with the con- tinued prosperity of Eastern lands, such as Egypt and Asia Minor, where there were still plenty of inhabitants and wealth, if not any new ideas, made the early Empire appear flourishing and successful, especially as peace prevailed. But in reality scarcely had the Romans achieved their work of extending through the western half of their Empire that classical culture which had originated among p . f the gifted Hellenes, when that classical culture the ancient began to dry up at the roots. In an earlier chap- and ft^dls- ter we noted the city-state as the key to classical tinctive civilization and described the flourishing urban life of the early Empire. We may now trace the decline of that civilization in connection with the decay of the ncient city. Perhaps first of all came the decay of civic religion. Once all inhabitants of a city had joined in the same religious beliefs and acts of worship, and the supreme reli- Decay of gious duty of every citizen had been to serve his C1V1C rell g lon city. Now the changed external conditions of life and the growth of philosophy had made educated men skeptical ncerning the gods, the myths, the religious rites and cere- .