The Romans were distinguished by their keen enjoyment of carnal pleasures, and their excess in every form of physical and mental indulgence. Never were a people mightier in strength or more lawless in action. From the time when Brutus first stained his name with the blood of assassination, to the darker period when Nero rioted in the most brutal vices, never were a people more colossal in moral guilt as well as in martial dominion. The profusion and luxury of a Roman life were commensurate with their capacity for gross excitement and the means of gratifying it, both of which were boundless. All that earth could furnish they commanded, but even this was insufficient to feed the flames of their lust, and, through grovelling debasement, they sank to the brink of extinction. The fitting symbol of their volcanic character and condition was Vesuvius when, B.C. 73, Spartacus, a fugitive slave, at the head of a hoard of gladiators and fellow-vassals in revolt, encamped on the summit, where they were blockaded in the midst of impending flames. The fearful unsatisfied desire to soar into infinity common to every human breast, in them took no nobler form than that powerful instinct of patriotism which burned in a few heroes and patriots. Regulus, who, with eyes cast down, tore himself from his kindred, quitted Rome, and hurried to the country of his enemies;--Decius, who, devoting himself to the infernal gods, invoked their vengeance upon his head, and rushed into the arms of death, seemed rather demigods than men. But, compared with the glowing cheerfulness of Leonidas, they were barbarians, since the law they fulfilled was without love. Even those who died at Thermopylæ can scarcely be regarded to have been actuated by true patriotism; but in fulfilling a national vow as they fell, there was something sublimer manifested than Rome ever knew, when the Spartan leader dictated that lofty inscription on the mountain-monument, "Stranger, tell at Lacedæmon, that we died here in obedience to her sacred laws."