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tion in Italy and the western provinces. But the chap.
elegant amusements of the Romans were not suf--
fered to interfere with their sound maxims of po-licy. Whilst they acknowledged the charms ofthe Greek, they asserted the dignity of the Latin tongue, and the exclusive use of the latter wasinflexibly maintained in the administration ofcivil as well as military government/ The twolanguages exercised, at the same time, their se-parate jurisdiction throughout the empire: theformer, as the natural idiom of science; the latter,as the legal dialectof public transactions. Thosewho united letters with business, were equallyconversant with both; and it was almost impos-sible, in any province, to find a Roman subject,of a liberal education, who was at once a stran-ger to the Greek and to the Latin language.
It was by such institutions that the nations of Slav £5the empire insensibly melted away into the Ro-man name and people. But there still remained,in the centre of every province, and of every fa-mily, an unhappy condition of men, who enduredthe weight, without sharing the benefits, of so-ciety. In the free states of antiquity, the do-mestic slaves were exposed to the wanton rigourof despotism. The perfect settlement of the XIleirRoman empire was preceded by ages of violence tltatnKnt -and rapine. The slaves consisted, for the mostpart, of barbarian captives, taken in thousands