INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 185 



course was animated by the Roman dominion, and the Latin 

 tongue spread over the whole West, and over a portion of 

 Northern Africa. In the East, Hellenism still predominated 

 long after the destruction of the Bactrian empire under Mith- 

 ridates I., and thirteen years before the irruption of the Sacae 

 or Scythians. 



With respect to geographical extent, the Latin tongue 

 gained upon the Greek, even before the seat of empire had 

 been removed to Byzantium. The reciprocal transfusion of 

 these two highly-organized forms of speech, which were so 

 rich in literary memorials, became a means for the more com- 

 plete amalgamation and union of different races, while it was 

 likewise conducive to an increase of civilization, and to a 

 greater susceptibility for intellectual cultivation, tending, as 

 PHny says, " to humanize men and to give them one common 

 country."* 



However much the languages of the barbarians, the dumb, 

 dykcoaaoL, as Pollux terms them, may have been generally 

 despised, there were some cases in which, according to the 

 examples of the Lagides, the translation of a literary work 

 from the Punic was undertaken in Rome by order of the 

 authorities ; thus, for instance, we find that Mago's treatise 

 on agriculture was translated at the command of the Roman 

 Senate. 



While the empire of the Romans extended in the Old Con- 

 tinent as far westward as the northern shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean — reaching to its extremest confines at the holy prom- 

 ontory — its eastern limit, even under Trajan, who navigated 

 the Tigris, did not advance beyond the meridian of the Per- 

 sian Gulf. It was in this direction that the progress of the 

 international contact produced by inland trade, whose results 

 were so important with respect to geography, was most strong- 

 ly manifested during the period under consideration. After 

 the downfall of the Grseco-Bactrian empire, the reviving 

 power of the Arsacidee favored intercourse with the Seres, al- 

 though only by indirect channels, as the Romans were im- 

 peded by the active commercial intervention of the Parthians 



* This beneficial influence of civilization, exemplified by the exteu 

 siou of a language iu exciting feelings of general good will, is finely 

 characterized in Pliny's praise of Italy: "omnium terrarum alumna 

 eadem et parens, numine Deiim electa, quae sparsa congregaret imperia, 

 ritusqae molliret, et tot populonim discordes ferasque linguas sermonia 

 commercio contraheret, colloquia, et humanitatem homini daret, brev- 

 iterque una cunctarura gentium in toto orbe patria fieret." (Plin, Hist. 

 Nat., iii., 5.\ 



