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whose habits could make anyone with the slightest scrap of moral sensitivity
physically ill.
Yet Rome's rise was part of the world's inexorable march to higher
levels of form. By force--sometimes sadistic force--she brought an
unprecedented mass of squabbling city-states and tribes together. In the
process, she allowed an interchange of ideas and goods that radically
quickened the pace of progress.
What's more, during the 300 years between Augustus and the
imposition of Christianity under Constantine, she made an additional
contribution. She introduced pluralism, an easygoing attitude which
allowed wildly diverse cultures to live peacefully side by side.165
Just how much the empire contributed to her sometimes oppressed
citizens could be seen when Rome fell. A set of heroes impelled by ideals of
ethnic conquest led their rebel bands against the colonialist power. The
mavericks toppled the hegemonic tyrants forever and turned the city of
Rome into a ruin.
In the process, they brought despair to Europe. During the next two
hundred years, half of the Continent's population would die.166 Plague ran
rampant. Multitudes starved to death dreaming of the food that had once
been transported on Roman ships and roads. Without a stable organizing
force, the paved highways on which provisions had traveled sank into
disrepair. On land, bandits and warrior chiefs ended the lives of any who
might contemplate a trip along the old paths to carry desperately needed
supplies. At sea, pirates destroyed the former Mediterranean lanes of trade.
The grain that had once sailed from Egypt in fleets of bulging transport hulls
no longer came across with the tides. In the Gallic town of Barbegal, the
complex of Roman-run mills which had turned the imported wheat into
flour for 80,000 consumers fell into disrepair.167 And the Gallic citizens who
had been freed of the Roman yoke perished by the millions.
pied territory. Rome, in short, was an appallingly vicious society, one
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