[229] Polyb. id. ibid. [230] Polyb. lib. 3. p. 259. [231] Livy, lib. 21. p. 132. [232] Ib. p. 135. [233] Liv. lib. 21. p. 135. 36. [234] Id. ibid. [235] Liv. lib. 3. p. 142....43. [236] Polyb. lib. 11. p. 888....89. [237] Appian. de Bell. Annib. 323. Edit. Hen. Steph. [238] Lib. 23 p. 265....66. [239] Liv. lib. 30. p. 135. [240] Lib. 22, p. 240. [241] Appian. de Bell. Hannib. p. 328. [242] Iberic. p. 259. [243] Appian. id. ibid. CHAPTER V. OF ROME. Though there is a concurrence of several causes which bring on the ruin of a state, yet where luxury prevails, that parent of all our fantastick imaginary wants, ever craving and ever unsatisfied, we may justly assign it as the leading cause: since it ever was and ever will be the most baneful to publick virtue. For as luxury is contagious from its very nature, it will gradually descend from the highest to the lowest ranks, until it has ultimately infected a whole people. The evils arising from luxury have not been peculiar to this or that nation, but equally fatal to all wherever it was admitted. Political philosophy lays this down as a fundamental and incontestable maxim,[244] that all the most flourishing states owed their ruin, sooner or later, to the effects of luxury; and all history, from the origin of mankind, confirms this truth by the evidence of facts to the highest degree of demonstration. In the great despotick monarchies it produced avarice, dissipation, rapaciousness, oppression, perpetual factions amongst the great, whilst each endeavoured to engross the favour of the prince wholly to himself; venality, and a contempt of all law and discipline both in the military and civil departments. Whilst the people, following the pernicious example of their superiors, contracted such a dastardly effeminacy, joined to an utter inability to support the fatigues of war, as quickly threw them into the hands of the first resolute invader. Thus the Assyrian empire sunk under the arms of Cyrus with his poor but hardy Persians. The extensive and opulent empire of Persia fell an easy conquest to Alexander and a handful of Macedonians; and the Macedonian empire, when enervated by the luxury of Asia, was compelled to receive the yoke of the victorious Romans.