And with such scant words of consolation, all similar cases were instantly dismissed and people were requested to keep their private opinions out of the courts. If a number of Cappadocian traders decided to settle down among the Colossians, they had a right to bring their own Gods with them and erect a temple of their own in the town of Colossae. But if the Colossians should for similar reasons move into the land of the Cappadocians, they must be granted the same privileges and must be given an equal freedom of worship. It has often been argued that the Romans could permit themselves the luxury of such a superior and tolerant attitude because they felt an equal contempt for both the Colossians and the Cappadocians and all the other savage tribes who dwelled outside of Latium. That may have been true. I don’t know. But the fact remains that for half a thousand years, a form of almost complete religious tolerance was strictly maintained within the greater part of civilized and semi-civilized Europe, Asia and Africa and that the Romans developed a technique of statecraft which produced a maximum of practical results together with a minimum of friction. To many people it seemed that the millennium had been achieved and that this condition of mutual forbearance would last forever. But nothing lasts forever. Least of all, an empire built upon force. Rome had conquered the world, but in the effort she had destroyed herself. The bones of her young soldiers lay bleaching on a thousand battlefields. For almost five centuries the brains of her most intelligent citizens had wasted themselves upon the gigantic task of administering a colonial empire that stretched from the Irish Sea to the Caspian. At last the reaction set in. Both the body and the mind of Rome had been exhausted by the impossible task of a single city ruling an entire world. And then a terrible thing happened. A whole people grew tired of life and lost the zest for living. They had come to own all the country-houses, all the town-houses, all the yachts and all the stage-coaches they could ever hope to use. They found themselves possessed of all the slaves in the world. They had eaten everything, they had seen everything, they had heard everything. They had tried the taste of every drink, they had been everywhere, they had made love to all the women from Barcelona to Thebes. All the books that had ever been written were in their libraries. The best pictures that had ever been painted hung on their walls. The cleverest musicians of the entire world had entertained them at their meals. And, as children, they had been instructed by the best professors and pedagogues who had taught them everything there was to be taught. As a result, all food and drink had lost its taste, all books had grown dull, all women had become uninteresting, and existence itself had developed into a burden which a good many people were willing to drop at the first respectable opportunity.