In course of time, when the Roman power was being extended abroad, the pursuit of conquest left little scope for the cultivation of the peaceful arts and the investigation of science, and life itself was accounted so cheap that little thought was given to improving methods for the treatment of the sick and wounded. On a campaign every soldier carried on his person a field-dressing, and the wounded received rough-and-ready first-aid attention from their comrades in arms. Later, when conquest was ended, and attention was given to the consolidation of the provinces, ease and happiness, as has been shown by Gibbon, tended to the decay of courage and thus to lessen the prowess of the Roman legions, but there was compensation for this state of affairs at the heart of the Empire because strong streams of capable and robust recruits flowed in from Spain, Gaul, Britain and Illyricum. At its commencement, the Empire was in a peaceful, and, on the whole, prosperous condition, and the provincials, as well as the Romans, "acknowledged that the true principles of social life, laws, agriculture, and science, which had been first invented by the wisdom of Athens, were now firmly established by the power of Rome, under whose auspicious influence the fiercest barbarians were united by an equal government and common language. They affirm that with the improvement of arts the human species was visibly multiplied. They celebrate the increasing splendour of the cities, the beautiful face of the country, cultivated and adorned like an immense garden; and the long festival of peace, which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of their ancient animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future danger." Thus wrote the Roman historian, and Gibbon states that when we discount as much of this as we please as rhetorical and declamatory, the fact remains that the substance of this description is in accordance with the facts of history. Never until the Christian era was any thought given to the regular care of the helpless and the abject. Slaves were often treated like cattle, and the patricians had no bond of sympathy with the plebeians. Provisions were sometimes distributed to the poor, and taxes remitted, but for reasons of State and not from truly charitable motives. Authority was also given to parents to destroy new-born infants whom they could not support. The idea of establishing public institutions for the relief of the sick and the poor did not enter the minds of the ancient Romans.