Upon the whole, therefore, what affects us on the first
reading as a prodigy or anomaly in the frantic outrages of the early
Caesars--falls within the natural bounds of intelligible human nature, when
we state the case considerately. Surrounded by a population which had not
only gone through a most vicious and corrupting discipline, and had been
utterly ruined by the license of revolutionary times, and the bloodiest
proscriptions, but had even been extensively changed in its very elements,
and from the descendants of Romulus had been transmuted into an Asiatic
mob;--starting from this point, and considering as the second feature of
the case, that this transfigured people, _morally_ so degenerate,
were carried, however, by the progress of civilization to a certain
intellectual altitude, which the popular religion had not strength to
ascend--but from inherent disproportion remained at the base of the
general civilization, incapable of accompanying the other elements in
their advance;--thirdly, that this polished condition of society, which
should naturally with the evils of a luxurious repose have counted upon
its pacific benefits, had yet, by means of its circus and its gladiatorial
contests, applied a constant irritation, and a system of provocations to
the appetites for blood, such as in all other nations are connected with
the rudest stages of society, and with the most barbarous modes of
warfare, nor even in such circumstances without many palliatives wanting
to the spectators of the circus;--combining these considerations, we have
already a key to the enormities and hideous excesses of the Roman
Imperator.
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