in Rome to the wide lands north and east and south of the Mediterranean,
and we have begun to realize the true achievements of the Empire. The
old theory of an age of despotism and decay has been overthrown, and the
believer in human nature can now feel confident that, whatever their
limitations, the men of the Empire wrought for the betterment and the
happiness of the world.

[Footnote 1: Wickhoff, _Wiener Genesis_, p. 10; Riegl, _Stilfragen_, p.
272.]

Their efforts took two forms, the organization of the frontier defences
which repulsed the barbarian, and the development of the provinces
within those defences. The first of these achievements was but for a
time. In the end the Roman legionary went down before the Gothic
horseman. But before he fell he had done his work. In the lands that he
had sheltered, Roman civilization had taken strong root. The fact has an
importance which we to-day might easily miss. It is not likely that any
modern nation will soon again stand in the place that Rome then held.
Our culture to-day seems firmly planted in three continents and our task
is rather to diffuse it further and to develop its good qualities than
to defend it. But the Roman Empire was the civilized world; the safety
of Rome was the safety of all civilization. Outside was the wild chaos
of barbarism. Rome kept it back from end to end of Europe and across a
thousand miles of western Asia. Through all the storms of barbarian
onset, through the carnage of uncounted wars, through plagues which
struck whole multitudes down to a disastrous death, through civil
discord and sedition and domestic treachery, the work went on. It was
not always marked by special insight or intelligence. The men who
carried it out were not for the most part first-rate statesmen or
first-rate generals. Their successes were those of character, not of