The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶117

Under the reign of these monsters, the slavery of the Romans was accompanied with two peculiar circumstances, the one occasioned by their former liberty, the other by their extensive conquests, which rendered their condition more completely wretched than that of the victims of tyranny in any other age or country. From these causes were derived, 1. The exquisite sensibility of the sufferers; and, 2. The impossibility of escaping from the hand of the oppressor.

Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #731 (Milman edition) — public domain
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.