indomitable will, a hard unpitying temper, great practical sagacity,
patience, and perseverance, superiority to adverse fortune, faith in
national destinies, heroic sentiments, and grand ambition. We see a
nation of citizen soldiers, an iron race of conquerors, bent on
conquest, on glory, on self-exaltation, attaching but little value to
the individual man, but exalting the integrity and unity of the state.
We see no fitful policy, no abandonment to the enjoyment of the fruits
of victory, no rest, no repose, no love of art or literature, but an
unbounded passion for domination. The Romans toiled, and suffered, and
died,--never wearied, never discouraged, never satisfied, until their
mission was accomplished and the world lay bleeding and prostrate at
their feet.

In the latter days of the Republic, the Roman citizen, originally
contented with a few acres in the plains and valleys through which the
Tiber flowed, becomes a great landed proprietor, owning extensive
estates in the conquered territories, an aristocrat, a knight, a
senator, a noble, while his dependents disdained to labor and were fed
at the public expense. The state could afford to give them corn, oil,
and wine, for it was the owner of Egypt, of Greece, of Asia Minor, of
Syria, of Spain, of Gaul, of Africa,--a belt of territory around the
Mediterranean Sea one thousand miles in breadth, embracing the whole
temperate zone, from the Atlantic Ocean to the wilds of Scythia. The
Romans revel in the spoils of the nations they have conquered, adorn
their capital with the wonders of Grecian art, and abandon themselves to
pleasure and money-making. The Roman grandees divide among themselves
the lands and riches of the world, and this dwelling-place of princes
looms up the proud centre of mundane glory and power.

In the great success of the Romans, we notice not only their own heroic