THE RACE PROBLEM OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 38: 

however have involved a certain mixing up of the races, and this is 
testified by the name of the Celtiberians. But the culture was little 
developed, the intercourse was rare, the intruders were not able to 
absorb the old races, they consolidated themselves within somewhat 
narrower frontiers. The tribes were independent and hostile to each 
other. This would have prevented a mixing up of the races on a 
larger scale, even if the conditions for such a mixing up had existed 
at all. 
Such were the conditions introduced by the Roman Empire. The 
peace of the Roman emperor, imposed by the Roman government, 
wiped out the old frontiers. The different tribes were subjected to 
the same administration and the same culture was opened to them all. 
The excellent Roman roads favoured the intercourse, while culture, 
trade, and the needs of the Empire increased it. The mixing up of 
the different races and peoples of the Empire was begun and increased 
by all the causes which make the inhabitants of a civilized state move 
from one part of it to another. What some of these causes were we 
have shown in the foregoing pages. The men who in former times 
had lived and died and propagated their kind within the frontiers 
of their own people were mixed up, as it were, in a great bowl] as 
wide as the limits of the Empire, and peoples from beyond the 
frontiers were thrown into the same vessel. This is the fundamental 
fact the importance and consequences of which we have to consider. 
It may be said that the problem was whether the less civilized 
peoples should be merged in the civilized — the Romans and the 
Greeks, to whom the culture and coherence of the Empire were due 
— or whether the civilized were to be absorbed by the less civilized. 
As we have seen, the circumstances were not favourable. The effects 
upon civilization were very important: the bankruptcy of the civili- 
zation and sinking of the general level of culture in the hardships 
and wars of the bad third century destroyed much more than all the 
cruelties of the emperors. But it is not our task here to investigate 
this point. The mixing up of the races involves not only a problem 
for civilization but also a biological problem, and to this we must 
now return. I think it may be understood in the new light of recent 
researches on genetics. 
The species man is extremely variable, being surpassed in this 
respect by only a very few other species. Each race is the product 
of a historical development, although the history of its development 
belongs to a time past long ago, which has never been recorded. The 
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