In the work of Ihne we see a certain recoil from Mommsen, and at the
same time an occasional inconsistency and a want of stability in the
principle of judgment. Our standard ought not to be positive but
relative. It was the age of force and conquest, not only with the Romans
but with all nations; _hospes_ was _hostis_. A perfectly
independent development of Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, and
all the other nationalities, might perhaps have been the best thing for
humanity. But this was out of the question; in that stage of the world's
existence contact was war, and the end of war was conquest or
destruction, the first of which was at all events preferable to the
second. What empire then can we imagine which would have done less harm
or more good than the Roman? Greek intellect showed its superiority in
speculative politics as in all other departments of speculation, but as
a practical politician the Greek was not self-controlled or strong, and
he would never have bestowed on the provinces of his empire local self-
government and municipal life; besides, the race, though it included
wonderful varieties in itself, was, as a race, intensely tribal, and
treated persistently all other races as barbarians. It would have
deprived mankind of Roman law and politics, as well as of that vast
extension of the Roman aedileship which covered the world with public
works beneficent in themselves and equally so as examples; whereas the
Roman had the greatness of soul to do homage to Greek intellect, and,
notwithstanding an occasional Mummius, preserved all that was of the
highest value in Greek civilization, better perhaps than it would have
been preserved by the tyrants and condottieri of the Greek decadence. As
to a Semitic Empire, whether in the hands of Syrians or Carthaginians,
with their low Semitic craft, their Moloch-worships and their
crucifixions,--the very thought fills us with horror. It would have
been a world-wide tyranny of the strong box, into which all the products
of civilization would have gone. _Parcere subjectis_ was the rule