CHAPTER III.: rome became great by ruining her neighboring cities, and by freely admitting strangers to her privileges and honors.

“Crescit interea Roma, Albæ ruinis.” Those who desire a city to achieve great empire must endeavor by all possible means to make her populous; for without an abundance of inhabitants it is impossible ever to make a city powerful. This may be done in two ways; either by attracting population by the advantages offered, or by compulsion. The first is to make it easy and secure for strangers to come and establish themselves there, and the second is to destroy the neighboring cities, and to compel their inhabitants to come and dwell in yours. These principles were so strictly observed by the Romans, that, in the time of the sixth king, Rome had already eighty thousand inhabitants capable of bearing arms. The Romans acted like a good husbandman, who for the purpose of strengthening a tree and making it produce more fruit and to mature it better, cuts off the first shoots it puts out, so that by retaining the sap and vigor in the trunk the tree may afterwards put forth more abundant branches and fruit. And that this is a good plan for aggrandizing a city and extending its empire, is proved by the example of Sparta and Athens, both

most warlike republics, and regulated by most excellent laws; and yet they did not attain the same greatness as Rome, which was far less well regulated. No other reason can be assigned for this than the above; for Rome, from having by the above two methods increased its population, was enabled to put two hundred thousand men into the field, whilst Sparta and Athens could not raise more than twenty thousand each. And this resulted not from Rome’s being more favorably situated, but solely from the difference in their mode of proceeding. For Lycurgus, the founder of the Spartan republic, believing that nothing would more readily destroy his laws than the admixture of new inhabitants, did everything possible to prevent strangers from coming into the city. Besides prohibiting their obtaining citizenship by marriage, and all other intercourse and commerce that bring men together, he ordered that in his republic only leather money should be used, so as to indispose all strangers from bringing merchandise into Sparta, or exercising any kind of art or industry there, so that the city never could increase in population. Now, as all the actions of men resemble those of nature, it is neither natural nor possible that a slender trunk should support great branches; and thus a small republic cannot conquer and hold cities and kingdoms that are larger and more powerful than herself, and if she does conquer them, she will experience the same fate as a tree whose branches are larger than the trunk, which will not be able to support them, and will be bent by every little breeze that blows. Such was the case with Sparta when she had conquered all the cities of Greece; but no sooner did Thebes revolt, than all the other cities revolted likewise, and the trunk was quickly left without any branches. This could not have happened to Rome, whose trunk was so strong that it could easily support all its branches. The above modes of proceeding, then, together with others of which we shall speak hereafter, made Rome great and most powerful, which Titus Livius points out in these few words: “Rome grew, whilst Alba was ruined.”