of races, and military valor, were lost. Weakness and humble condition were about to become advantageous, and helps to virtue.[16.74] The Roman nobility, the Greek wisdom, will struggle for three centuries more. Tacitus will approve the deportation of some thousands of these wretches--"small loss if they had perished!"[16.75] The Roman aristocracy will fret, will be provoked that this _canaille_ should have its gods and institutions. But the victory is written in advance. The Syrian, the poor man who loves his fellows, who shares with them and associates with them, will carry the day. The Roman aristocracy must perish, and perish without pity. To explain the revolution which is about to take place, we must take note of the political, social, moral, intellectual, and religious condition of the countries through which Jewish proselytism has thus opened furrows for the Christian preaching to sow the seed. Such an examination will show convincingly, I hope, that the conversion of the world to the Jewish and Christian ideas was inevitable, and will leave us astonished at only one thing--namely, that that conversion proceeded so slowly and commenced so late. CHAPTER XVII. STATE OF THE WORLD IN THE FIRST CENTURY. The political condition of the world was most melancholy. All power was concentrated at Rome and in the legions. The most shameful and degrading scenes were daily enacted. The Roman aristocracy, which had conquered the world, and which alone of all the people had any voice in public business under the Cæsars, had abandoned itself to a Saturnalia of the most outrageous wickedness the human race ever witnessed. Cæsar and Augustus, in establishing the imperial power, saw perfectly the necessities of the age. The world was so low in its political relations, that no other form of government was possible. Now that Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient constitution, which was based upon the existence of a privileged patrician class, a kind of obstinate and malevolent _Tories_, could not continue.[17.1] But Augustus had signally neglected every suggestion of true policy, by leaving the future to chance. Destitute of any canon of hereditary succession, of any settled rules concerning adoption, and of any law regulating election, Cæsarism was like an enormous load on the deck of a vessel without ballast. The most terrible shocks were inevitable. Three times in a century, under Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, the greatest power that was ever united in one person fell into the hands of most extravagant and execrable men. Horrors were enacted which have hardly been surpassed by the monsters of the Mongol dynasties. In that fatal list of monarchs, one is reduced to apologizing for a Tiberius, who only attained thorough detestableness towards the close of his life; and for a Claudius, who was only eccentric, blundering, and badly advised. Rome became a school of vice and cruelty. It should be