All the great cities of antiquity, which had been seats of luxury and pride, had now been utterly destroyed—Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and Carthage. Corinth was already sacked by Mummius, and Jerusalem was to be by Titus, and Rome herself was finally to receive a still direr chastisement at the hands of Goths and Vandals. So Providence moves on in his mysterious power to bring to naught the grandeur and power of rebellious nations—rebellious to those mighty moral laws which are as inexorable as the laws of nature.
The territory on the coast of Zeugitana and Byzantium, which formed the last possession of Carthage, was erected into the province of Africa, and the rich plain of that fertile [pg 471] province became more important to Rome for supplies of corn than even Sicily, which had been the granary of Rome.
Scipio triumphs.
Scipio returned to Rome, and enjoyed a triumph more gorgeous than the great Africanus. He also lived to enjoy another triumph for brilliant successes in Spain, yet to be enumerated, but was also doomed to lose his popularity, and to perish by the dagger of assassins.
Change in Roman manners.
Rome had now acquired the undisputed dominion of the civilized world, and with it, the vices of the nations she subdued. A great decline in Roman morals succeeded these brilliant conquests. Great internal changes took place. The old distinction of patricians and plebeians had vanished, and a new nobility had arisen, composed of rich men and of those whose ancestors had enjoyed curule magistracies. They possessed the Senate, and had control of the Comitia Centuriata, by the prerogative vote of the equestrian centuries. A base rabble had grown up, fed with corn and oil, by the government, and amused by games and spectacles. The old republican aristocracy was supplanted by a family oligarchy. The vast wealth which poured into Rome from the conquered countries created disproportionate fortunes. The votes of the people were bought by the rich candidates for popular favor. The superstitions of the East were transferred to the capitol of the world, and the decay in faith was as marked as the decay in virtue. Chaldæan astrologers were scattered over Italy, and the gods of all the conquered peoples of the earth were worshiped at Rome. The bonds of society were loosed, and a state was prepared for the civil wars which proved even more destructive than the foreign.