for monstrous wealth, and, on the other, to hold down and pacify the proletariat and subject barbarians, on whom the oligarchy fed. Steady degradation followed the Augustan "Pax Romana"; the whole of the mighty power of Rome, the growth of so many centuries of energy and valour, was prostituted to the squeezing of taxes from the Roman world; the very form of the citysociety was reduced to an absurdity by the sale of citizenship, until Caracalla abolished its mere form, extending it to all freed men. At last the Roman armies were wholly composed of Gauls and Goths, Armenians and Arabs; no Italian could be found willing to fight for his life much less for the sham state, good only for tax-gathering, which now represented the once great city. Rome fell, and with it the Ancient World.