There was a vast body of non-producers, living in idleness and owning a foreign allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the toil of the laborers.

It could not be otherwise than that small farms should be unceasingly merged into the larger estates; that the poor should steadily become poorer; that society, far from improving, should exhibit a continually increasing demoralization.

Outside the monastic institutions no attempt at intellectual advancement was made; indeed, so far as the laity were concerned, the influence of the Church was directed to an opposite result, for the maxim universally received was, that "ignorance is the mother of devotion." The settled practice of republican and imperial Rome was to have swift communication with all her outlying provinces, by means of substantial bridges and roads.

One of the prime duties of the legions was to construct them and keep them in repair.

By this, her military authority was assured.