78 A BOOK OF MORTALS 



jl HOUGH it were an easy task to fill volumes 

 with what great writers have written of 

 Rome, it is surely unnecessary here to do 

 more than set down simply the word which 

 with Love, and Gold, and War, and Peace, 

 and Death, and Life form the seven great 

 monosyllables of Man's world. 



Rome ! 



None can deny its influence even now, since every 

 schoolboy of to-day is virtually being educated amongst 

 its Seven Hills. 



All we have to point out is the source from which that 

 influence flowed ; for there are other cities in the world 

 besides Rome ; there have been empires as great. 



Rome, then, was in a sense Man's revolt against himself, 

 his return to the simpler, freer code of nature. 



Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt — all these, ere they fell asleep 

 drugged by their own desires, had given to the world lucre, 

 pleasure, luxury, rest. But the Roman who had " tugged 

 at the she-wolf's breast " had other aspirations, was to found 

 a different empire. To be " unquenched through ages," 

 to be unquenched surely for ever, there was born into the 

 world the freedom of life and death, the liberty which 

 brings " woe to them who goad," the liberty which brings 

 " death in silence biting hard." 



That was the spirit of the she-wolf and her nurselings, 

 and it has outlasted both : in a way it has outlasted even 

 Rome, though the battered old bronze of the Capitol still 

 reminds us of the message of the wolf. 



It would be unfair, however, not to remember another 

 influence which the wolf has undoubtedly had on humanity. 



