THE FALL OF ROME 
53 
a theory was entertained, at a time when all women 
were industrial and sexual slaves, and a large ma 
jority of the male population were also enslaved. 
Surely, a slave could not follow the impulses of 
her or his being. All but a small class of the peo 
ple were rendered immoral by the conditions created 
for them by that small minority who were free, ac 
cording to this theory, yet such the theory undoubt 
edly was. When the Romans conquered Greece, 
the victors carried home with them the philosophers, 
as a part of the spoil of conquest, and quite a fury 
for the Grecian culture fell upon the Roman leisure 
class. Philosophy was everywhere;—philosophy 
and logic, rhetoric and art. The very air the Roman 
citizen breathed was Grecian culture. Thus the 
theory that human nature was perfect became a 
part of the Roman’s catechism. But that theory 
was already greatly damaged and brought into dis 
credit by the fact that the Greek had come to his 
own destruction by following the impulses of his 
own human nature. And by the time of the period 
of Roman decay, the Roman philosophers had come 
to the unhappy conclusions that man was not only 
not wholly good, but that he was, on the contrary, 
altogether bad. Even his very best was wholly vile, 
and so hopeless a case was he that, according to the 
philosophers, the only approach to virtue possible of 
attainment for him, lay in the ceaseless mortifica 
tion of the flesh and the crushing of every impulse 
of his nature.