80 HISTORY OF GREECE, ROME, AND ASIA 



The love of war and glory still lasting through centuries in Europe, 

 the greatness of the monumental remains, and the inheritance of 

 Roman political organizations also accepted by the Church, the 

 Roman laws which absorbed all the legislative work of the ancient 

 world, the cares for the defense of the Rhine, Danube, and of Asia 

 Minor, the song of Virgil, the prose of Cicero and Livy, are such great 

 events that they could not be entirely forgotten, not even by the rough 

 Middle Ages.' The comparison between Romanity and the subsequent 

 barbarism of Europe is enough to explain the reverent admiration 

 which also in these last centuries has existed for the great merits 

 of Roman civilization. But an exact comparison of the origin of all 

 ancient civilization and the ties that the Latin world has had with 

 the Greek naturally leads to a better understood and measured 

 admiration. When studying the light we must not neglect the 

 shadows. But still recognizing all the merits of Roman civilization, 

 we must keep in mind all that was done by the preceding nations. 

 Rome civilized the coast of Northern Africa, but we must not forget, 

 as some critic has done, the preparatory work of the Carthaginians 

 from whom Rome learned for the first time the arts of agriculture. 

 It is Rome that has the merit of having civilized the Gauls, but we 

 must not pass over in silence the extended and beneficial preparatory 

 work of the Greek Massilia, which for its civil institutions and its 

 commerce was once quite superior to Rome, and even during the 

 Empire was justly chosen by Romans as a seat for the moral educa- 

 tion of her sons. An exact balance of all that has been produced by 

 the Roman civilization has not yet been struck. This examination 

 will, certainly in many instances, prove of honor to the Italian people, 

 to whom the West owes the transmission of light on the old Hellenic 

 civilization. Many statistics and comparative works that are still 

 needed, for instance, for the Iberian Peninsula, have not been 

 written. And such researches will have to consider density of the 

 population, the true condition and transformation of slavery, the 

 diffusion of the Eastern cults, and finally of the first Christian society. 

 But among all the problems which have not yet been solved, the most 

 difficult and the most complex is always the one on the value of the 

 political work of the Emperors themselves. 



Mommsen rightly observed that legend is found just as much in 

 the life of Fabricius as in the anecdote of the Emperor Gaius; and as 

 Willrich has recently demonstrated, many data of Imperial traditions 

 deserve a new revision. But in order to resolve the problem of authen- 

 ticity in the ancient tales, it is not enough to establish researches, 

 even diligent ones, on the discordance and on the presumable value 

 of the historical sources. Such complex problems can be solved only 

 by the examination of other historical periods. The critic who studies 

 the Empire is immediately impressed by the ferociousness of the 



