_Causes of the Decadence_. When we examine the causes of this great revolution in Roman family life from the austere morals and stable family of the early Romans to the laxity and promiscuity of the later Romans, we find that these causes can perhaps be grouped under four or five principal heads, (1) First among all the causes we must put the destruction of the domestic religion, namely, ancestor worship, through the growth of nature worship and skeptical philosophy. The destruction of the domestic religion necessarily shattered the foundations of the Roman family, since, as we have already seen, there was the closest connection between the family life of the early Romans and ancestor worship. But it is not probable that ancestor worship was destroyed merely through the growth of nature worship and of skeptical philosophy. As we have already seen, it was a religion which was mainly adapted to isolated groups. Changes in economic and political conditions, therefore, were to some extent prior to the decay of the domestic religion. (2) Changes in economic conditions, that is, in the form of industry, were, then, among the more important causes of the decay of the early Roman family. The patriarchal family, as we have already seen, belonged essentially to the pastoral stage of industry, and as soon as settled agricultural life, commerce, and manufacturing industry developed, this destroyed the isolated patriarchal groups, and so also in time affected even the religion which was their basis. Again, the increase of population going along with the changes in the methods in obtaining a living destroyed the old conditions under which the family had been the political unit. (3) We have therefore as a third cause the breaking up of old political conditions. Family groups were welded into small cities and the authority of the patriarch was destroyed. Legislation designed to meet the new social conditions often profoundly affected the whole family group, and weakened family bonds. (4) The growth of divorce and of vice may be put down as a fourth cause of the decay of the Roman family. Some may say that this was an effect of the decay of the Roman family rather than a cause, but it was also a cause as well as an effect, for it is a peculiarity of social life that what is at one stage an effect reacts to become a cause at a later stage; and this was certainly the case with the growth of divorce and vice in Rome, in its effect upon the Roman family. Moreover, much of this came from Greece through imitation. The family life had decayed in Greece much earlier than it had in Rome, and when Rome conquered Greece it annexed its vices also. While the most radical social changes do not usually come about merely through imitation, yet the imitation of a foreign people is frequently, in the history of a particular nation, one of the most potent causes in bringing about social changes. It was certainly so in the case of the growth of divorce and vice in Rome.