Closely related to this question of the alarming growth of the larger cities was the displacement of the native stock in Rome and Italy by people from abroad. We have already noticed that nearly ninety per cent. of the permanent residents of Rome under the Empire were of foreign extraction. Rome was therefore facing the same situation which disturbs us. It is true that most of the foreigners living in Italy were slaves or the descendants of slaves, as is the case with the negroes in this country. It was an instance of forced rather than of voluntary immigration, but the resultant change in the character of the population is the same in both cases. Not only was the city of Rome dominated by foreigners, but at Beneventum, and Milan, and throughout the country districts of Italy the same condition prevailed. In still another respect the change in the character of the population of Italy reminds us of a corresponding change in our own population. Fifty years ago most of our immigrants came from western Europe. That tide of immigration has decreased and we regard with some alarm the arrival at our ports now of large numbers of people from eastern and southeastern Europe. They come from countries whose languages, and political and social ideas are very different from ours. They do not readily accept our traditions and institutions. This was exactly the situation in Italy under the Empire. By very interesting studies which Professor Frank[40] and others have made of the names found on tombstones and in the records of trade-guilds it appears that “the whole of Italy as well as the Romanized portions of Gaul and Spain were during the Empire dominated in blood by the East.” The result was disastrous to Roman traditions and to Roman political life. In Professor Frank’s opinion, the fact that, even as early as the time of the Gracchi, “reform through orderly compromise gave way to revolution through bloodshed is largely due to the displacement of real Italic peoples by men of Oriental, Punic and Iberian stock.” At all events the presence of this large Oriental element in the population of the West helps us to understand the comparative willingness with which Rome accepted the principate in place of the republic. It helps us to understand the development of autocracy, the gradual adoption of Oriental titles and ceremonial at court, and the partial acceptance by the people of the Oriental theory of the Emperor’s power. IV. SOME FINAL REFLECTIONS