The middle class was either ruined, or perished during the progress of this great war. From the time of the Gracchi, besides a population of poor people and freed slaves, there remained only a wealthy class, wielding great power by reason of their immense riches, their command of great armies, their control of taxation, and of the destinies of the commonwealth in general. At first united but afterwards divided, at the end of a century’s struggle one of these classes emerged victorious. Thus power, founded by sheer force, passed to the armies, the embodiment of force. In the meanwhile, the universe, depopulated and ruined by conquest, by civil wars, by the pillage of the proconsuls, by the demands of the imperial treasury, supplied no more soldiers. With the fall of militarism, an oriental despotism, characterised by a cunning administration, was founded. Through war and its results, conquerors and conquered, nations and liberties, had all perished. Nothing remained in force but a system of effete institutions under the caprice of a ruler who was often hardly a man. The ancient institution of the family disappeared under the influence of Grecian ideas and oriental customs. The judicial dicta of lawyers and prætors conflicted with the authority of the husband and father; civil family ties became dissolved in excess of pleasures and love of conquest. In spite of the laws of Augustus, marriages decreased, and were only excuses for adultery and divorce. Mysticism, poverty, the discouragement of the curials, added despair to the effects of debauchery and created a contempt for life. By these changes in domestic life and under the influence of foreign philosophers, the Roman idea of property changed. First of all in the hands of the father (mancipium), possessions next became a family inheritance (dominium), and ended by belonging entirely to the individual (proprietas). Though benefited in theory, in practice property ceased to exist, because according to the law the emperor was master over it, because the treasury took its fruits, because taxation, tyranny, ignorance, and a growing depopulation rendered it sterile or reduced it to nought. The ancient religion assimilated with the religions of Greece and the East, disappeared in the pantheon of the gods enlarged by dead emperors, and there remained of it only official pomp and an excuse for persecutions. The jealousy of despots, the degradation of servitude, the loss of all interests and of all hope, the abuse of pleasures, the downfall of Greece and of the East, extinguished all that was yet known of art and science. The jurisconsults alone laid down a code of laws, the last result of the spirit of organisation.