theological atmosphere of Alexandria, and on the purely human side ended
in Stoicism with an amalgam of universal philosophy and Roman law. The
Stoic Empire of the second century A.D. was the high-water mark of the
joint efforts of Greeks and Romans to attain unity and humanism in
thought and practice. Its brilliance while it lasted the nobility of
its leading men, the persistence of the main lines of its structure, are
the measure of our debt to the builders of the Greco-Roman world.

The Roman contribution to the result which in the end so perfectly
combined both movements was, in its origin and nature, singularly unlike
the Greek. The Roman did not analyse his conceptions. He accepted what
came to him, either from his ancestors or from other peoples, without
scrutiny, except so far as to see that new matter could be worked into
old forms without a dislocation in practice. He was the pragmatist, the
Greek the idealist. This instinct of adaptation and sequence made the
Roman the pioneer in law as the Greek was the pioneer in science. It
rendered possible the holding together in one political system of the
multifarious territories and peoples from the Tigris to the Solway Firth
for long enough to enable the greater part of that area to be
permanently civilized on Roman lines. But, like the artist's sketch of
his picture, the whole was outlined before the parts were worked out in
their final form; and the sketch itself was seriously imperfect in more
than one point. The set-back which Augustus received on the eastern side
of the Rhine was never made good, and the Germanic tribes therefore
remained un-Romanized until the Church in the seventh and eighth
centuries resumed the work on other lines. This defeat of Varus and the
legend of Hermann became to the German a symbol of national greatness in
a sense which none of the other national conflicts with Rome ever
assumed. To us Boadicea is a barbarian, and we trace with gratitude and
pleasure the signs of civilization left by the Roman occupation. To us