70 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME, AND ASIA 



Mommsen, in fact, after having silenced the voices of his oppon- 

 ents, has seen his triumphal chariot followed by the best energies 

 of two generations of learned men. But it looks as if it were an 

 inevitable historical necessity that to the works of learned men 

 should be reserved a fate quite different from that which is decreed 

 to the works of artists. The greatest perfection reached by a poet or 

 a painter has not as its immediate effect the disdaining of his pre- 

 decessors' work. Human curiosity is, in this case, rather urged to 

 examine and to appreciate the less mature and perfect work which 

 marks a salient point in the artistic development. On the contrary, 

 it is quite rare not to see those same laurels gathered by the greatest 

 scientists, rapidly fade and drop. And the history of science, keeping 

 firmly to the vital ideas and criteria which make the works of the 

 most eminent authors of the greatest importance, gives only a flying 

 glance to the older works, which have spread in their times the ideas 

 which had to produce the new germs. 



The direct efficacy of August Boechk has been now transmitted 

 in a great measure to other writers, and though the impression left 

 by Mommsen, who, following close upon Boechk, rilled with him all 

 the nineteenth century, is still lasting, it is clear that also through 

 the ideas and infinite researches which emanated from his great 

 mind, we are on the eve of a new and great intellectual movement, 

 a movement which is alimented and increased by the new material 

 which is being discovered in every part of the ancient classical world. 



In these last years we are coming into possession of new Greek 

 histories, which are destined to make the world forget the ones 

 written by Grote and Curtius; and new ideas and problems are 

 already fermenting in the human brain, which will necessarily lead 

 to new histories of the Republic and of the Roman Empire, quite 

 different from those of Mommsen and Gibbon. 



The opinion generally accepted that the material of the classical 

 world is now altogether determined and closed, and that the study 

 of historians should be limited to penetrating literary examination, 

 discussed word by word, and to the observing of the old materials 

 under new points of view, has been altogether destroyed by the 

 fortunate discovery of papyri which, thanks, especially, to English 

 diligence and learning, are coming to us from the very bowels of 

 ancient Egypt. And to the papyri which illustrate every part of 

 the public and private life of the ancient world are added the results 

 given by the excavations which illustrate both the mature ages and 

 the first origins of civilization among the classic peoples. 



One of the most salient characteristics of the nineteenth century 

 has been, in fact, the patient research of the embryonic forms of all 

 cosmic life. It was quite natural that from this universal tendency 

 the study of classic history should not have been exempt; a study 



