ABSTRACT
THIS is not the place for a profound and circumstantial study of the development of the political and administrative systems in the course of the centuries between Actium and the death of Theodosius. Nor can it be expected that we should give a detailed account of the relations of the senatorial and the equestrian orders which, in the second and first centuries B.c., were engaged in bitter warfare with one another. It must suffice here to describe in a few words the imperial institutions, their gradual transformation, and the influence which the latter exercised on the conditions of life and work. The class conflicts became much less sharp in this phase, when oriental absolutism was tending to bend all social categories to its will and to find places in a complicated social order for the millions of men who were all equally deprived of liberty.
