EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OP THE CONTEMPLATION 



Although, however, the vastness of the Eoman empire, 

 and the institutions which that vastness rendered necessary, 

 were strongly contrasted with the independent life of the 

 small Hellenic republics, and tended rather to deaden than 

 to cherish creative intellectual power among its citizens, yet 

 there resulted from the same cause some peculiar advantages, 

 which should be noticed here. A rich accession of ideas 

 was the fruit of experience and varied observation ; the world 

 of objects was considerably augmented, and the ground was 

 thus lajd for a thoughtful contemplation of natural pheno- 

 mena at a later epoch. The Eoman empire gave animation 

 to the intercourse between nations, and extended the Eoman 

 language over the whole of the West, and over a portion of 

 Northern Africa. In the East, Greek influence survived, as 

 if naturalised, long after the Bactrian empire had been de- 

 stroyed under Mithridates I. (thirteen years before the attack 

 of the Sacse, or Scythians.) 



In point of geographical extent, the Eoman language 

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

 transferred to Byzantium. The interpenetration of two 

 highly-gifted idioms, rich in literary monuments, became a 

 means of farther blending and uniting different nations and 

 faces, and of increasing civilization and susceptibility to 

 mental culture; it tended, as Pliny says, ( 285 ) " to huma- 

 nize men, and to give them a common country/' However 

 much the language of the barbarians (the dumb, ayXoxro-oi, as 

 Pollux calls them) may have been contemned, yet there 

 were instances in which the translation of a literary work 

 from the Punic to the Eoni8,n language was desired by the 

 public authorities : Mago's Treatise on Agriculture is known 

 to have been translated by the command of the Eoman 



