world; nor is there any thing in history more suggestive and
instructive.

A little city, founded by robbers on the banks of the Tiber, rises
gradually into importance, although the great cities of the East are
scarcely conscious of its existence. Its early struggles simply arrest
the attention, and excite the jealousy, of the neighboring nations. The
citizens of this little state are warriors, and, either for defense or
glory, they subdue one after another the cities of Latium and Etruria,
then the whole of Italy, and finally the old monarchies and empires of
the world. In two hundred and fifty years the citizens have become
nobles, and a great aristocracy is founded, which lasts eight hundred
years. Their aggressive policy and unbounded ambition involve the whole
world in war, which does not cease until all the nations known to the
Greeks acknowledge their sway. Everywhere Roman laws, language, and
institutions spread. A vast empire arises, larger than the Assyrian and
the Macedonian combined,--a universal empire,--a great wonder and
mystery, having all the grandeur of a providential event. It becomes too
great to be governed by an oligarchy of nobles. Civil wars create an
imperator, who, uniting in himself all the great offices of state, and
sustained by the conquering legions, rules from East to West and from
North to South, with absolute and undivided sovereignty. The Caesars
reach the summit of human greatness and power, and the city of Romulus
becomes the haughty mistress of the world. The emperor is worshiped as a
deity, and the proud metropolis calls herself eternal. An empire is
established by force of arms and by a uniform policy, such as this world
has not seen before or since.

Early Roman history is chiefly the detail of successful wars, aggressive
and uncompromising, in which we see a fierce and selfish patriotism, an