"The effect of the wars was that the ranks of the small farmers were decimated, while the number of slaves who did not serve in the army multiplied," says Professor Bury. Thus "Vir gave place to Homo," thus the mob filled Rome and the mob-hero rose to the imperial throne. No wonder that Constantine seemed greater than Augustus. No wonder that "if Tiberius chastised his subjects with whips, Valentinian chastised them with scorpions."[2] [2] The point of this is that the cruel Tiberius was less severe on the Romans of his day than was the relatively benevolent Valentinian on his decadent people. With Marcus Aurelius and the Antonines came a "period of sterility and barrenness in human beings." Bounties were offered for marriage. Penalties were devised against race-suicide. "Marriage," says Metellus, "is a duty which, however painful, every citizen ought manfully to discharge." Wars were conducted in the face of a declining birth-rate, and the decline in quality and quantity in the human breed engaged very early the attention of Roman statesmen. Deficiencies of numbers were made up by immigration, willing or enforced. Failure in quality was beyond remedy. Says Professor Zumpt: 'Government having assumed godhead, took at the same time the appurtenances of it. Officials multiplied. Subjects lost their rights. Abject fear paralyzed the people and those that ruled were intoxicated with insolence and cruelty.... The worst government is that which is most worshipped as divine. . . . The emperor possessed in the army an overwhelming force over which citizens had no influence, which was totally deaf to reason or eloquence, which had no patriotism because it had no country, which had no humanity because it had no domestic ties. . . . There runs through Roman literature a brigand's and barbarian's contempt for honest industry. . . . Roman civilization was not a creative kind, it was military, that is, destructive.' What was the end of it all? The nation bred Romans no more. To cultivate the Roman fields "whole tribes were borrowed." The man with quick eye and strong arm gave place to the slave, the scullion, the pariah, whose lot is fixed because in him there lies no power to alter it. So at last the Roman world, devoid of power to resist, was overwhelmed by the swarming Ostrogoths. The barbarian settled and peopled the empire rather than conquered it. It was the weakness of war-worn Rome that gave the Germanic races their first opportunity. "The nation is like a bee," wisely observes Bernard Shaw, "as it stings it dies."