A HISTORY OF MANKIND, Pagan Rome and Early Christianity. CHAPTER XXVIII. LEGENDARY ROME. SECTION 421. Rome in Culture.-Of all nations, ancient Rome fills the most prominent place in the history of culture. To her belongs the exclusive credit of having held sway over all the countries that, in her time, deserved to be called civilized. In the combination of extent with duration, her empire has been unequaled. She conceived, formulated, and practically applied the greatest of all codes of civil law, and established its authority over the most progressive portions of the three continents in the Old World. She made her tongue the common speech of western Europe, of northern Africa, and of medieval, and until recently, of modern scholarship; and by her influence, it became the mother of the languages of France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, and Wallachia, as well as of Italy. She preserved Greek literature. She created a valuable literature of her own, which, next to that of Hellas, until the last century, was the most valuable of all national literatures. She connects the Europe of antiquity with that of our own day. She She inherited and completed the task of Alexander the Great, in giving political unity to the regions bordering on the Mediterranean. She established peace and uniform government under one official language from the Euphrates to the Atlantic. She substituted civilization and Latin for barbarous customs and tongues in extensive regions of western Europe. She converted the heterogeneous and hostile Sabines, Volscians, Hernicans, Samnites, Umbrians, Etruscans, Campanians, Italians, Greeks, Ligurians, Gauls, Iberians, Illyrians, and Dacians into a homogeneous and harmonious people. absorbed, assimilated, and consolidated many nations, far more than any other state ever did. Besides civilizing extensive regions previously barbarous, she gave to the whole civilized world one nationality, one system of municipal institutions, and one religion. Great as is Athens in the history of the human mind, ancient Rome is still greater in many respects. In her laws, her affiliated tongues, and her daughter nations, she continues to reign over much of the most enlightened portion of the globe. It was mainly by the aid of her polity, including her military system, that she acquired vast power and influence. In this department of culture she showed much. originality and surpassed every other state of antiquity. In this she became eminent while she was still crude in literature, in ornamental art, and in religion. By this she was enabled to conquer, to hold, to govern, and to unite a hundred other nations into one harmonious empire. In her successive struggles for life with Etruria, Samnium, Epirus, Carthage, Macedonia, and Gaul, the most formidable states with which she came in conflict, her superior polity was the main cause of her ultimate triumph. Of all national military careers, that of ancient Rome is the most brilliant. She made more campaigns, fought more battles, won more victories, slew and enslaved more enemies, and conquered, annexed, and permanently held more countries than did any other state. In military power, as compared with coeval nations, no other has approached her. Her drill was not so thorough as that of Sparta, but her army was much larger, her sphere of operations far more extensive, her high military efficiency of much longer duration, and her political basis much more solid. Among ancient monarchies, the only one that rivaled Rome in area and population was Persia, which was loose and heterogeneous in its political and military organizations, and short in its life as an extensive empire. In successful assimilation of conquered regions, and in the introduction of a higher culture into subject states, the most notable rival of ancient Rome has been the Quichuan empire. The modern nation which, by the wide dominion of her tongue, her arms, her original system of law, the magnitude of her homogeneous colonies, and the multitude of her heterogeneous subject provinces, most frequently suggests comparison with ancient Rome, is England; and the comparison is creditable to both nations. SEC. 422. Site.-The Italian peninsula is about five hundred miles long and one hundred wide, divided into eastern and western slopes by the Apennines, which extend through its whole length, and, with their spurs, occupy half its width, rising along their summits to an average height of about four thousand feet. This penin sula, besides covering a greater area, is richer in agricultural resources than Greece, having a larger proportion of valley land, and more fertility in its tillable districts. The two countries, however, are near together and similar in situation, climate, and productions. In both the olive is a characteristic fruit. When civilization had its origin in Greece, Italy was unfavorably situated for commerce and culture. It was remote from Asia Minor, Babylonia, Phoenicia, and Egypt, where industry was most skillful and traffic most active. But when the Roman republic was founded, about 500 B. C., the shores of Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, southern France, and northern Africa were occupied by Phoenician and Greek colonies; Carthaginian and Etruscan merchants traded regularly with the British Isles. and the shores of the Baltic; the silver of Spain and the tin of Cornwall were mined extensively; and Italy was in the geographical center of the maritime commerce of the time. Since then it has lost that position. The intervening centuries have made vast changes in the industrial world. The nations now most eminent for refinement, for wealth, for manufactures, and for shipping are in the basin, not of the Mediterranean, but of the north Atlantic; and the central position which, twenty centuries since, was held by Rome, is now occupied by London. We cannot understand the past without measuring it by, and comparing it with, the present. The largest stream of the peninsula is the Tiber, which flows down the western slope of the Apennines and reaches the Mediterranean about half way between the Alps and Sicily. For sixteen miles from its mouth, this river has a width of about a hundred yards and depth of more than |