Nor is this a historical paradox. It is only what always happens to a greater or less extent. In families as in nations and civilisations, ostentation, display, the doing on a grand scale everything, even what might be done on a small scale without detriment, or even advantageously, are a sign of decadence rather than of progress. The passion for the colossal and the enormous is not a healthy passion, nor does it flourish in epochs of strength and sound moral and social equilibrium; it is a passion which thrives in epochs of decadence, epochs convulsed by a deep-seated disproportion between desires and reality, a thirst for excitements and violent sensations, lavish in the expenditure of labour and of wealth to procure a fallacious illusion of grandeur and power, spurred on by a spirit of rivalry and of competition which easily degenerates into false pride. Not the least of the causes contributing to the maintenance and increase in the ancient cities of that sumptuousness of festivals, ceremonies, and monuments which gradually ruined the Roman Empire was the rivalry between the big, the medium-sized, and the small cities of the Empire, between provinces and districts, between classes, families, professions, sects, and religions. When a city built a theatre, or baths, or a basilica, at once her sister-cities wanted one too, as big or bigger. If a rich family built or endowed a temple or baths, the other families wished to do the same or more. There was a continual competition between the religions to have the finest temple or the most sumptuous ceremonial. That explains why a little city like Verona, for instance, has an enormous amphitheatre, in which the whole population of the city could be accommodated several times over. That explains why the provinces, the cities and private individuals, in this competition of display and magnificence, all showered enormous wealth on that display, wealth which would have been better spent in defending the Empire or in preserving its economic resources. Many of those remains which evoke our admiration to-day meant, in the days when they reared their proud bulk to the sky, the ruin of the Empire!