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    occu

    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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