8 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



object was to facilitate the marches of their legions of 

 soldiers. 



It is difficult to judge of the enormous extent of the 

 Roman Empire. The only empire in any way to be 

 compared to it was that established by the great 

 Napoleon, whose conquest constituted him for a 

 time a despotic ruler over the greater part of 

 Europe ; or Charlemagne, whose invasions brought 

 the greater part of Europe under his sway. According 

 to historians, the Roman territory measured six 

 hundred leagues from north to south, upwards of a 

 thousand from east to west, and extended over a 

 surface of eighty thousand square leagues, and this 

 area embraced the richest and most fertile countries in 

 Europe. On the north, the Empire was bounded by the 

 wall of the Caledonians or Picts, the Rhine, the Danube, 

 and the Black Sea ; the Picts' wall, which bisected 

 Scotland in its narrowest point, left the Romans in 

 possession of the Lowlands of Scotland, and the whole 

 of England. Ihe Rhine and the Danube separated 

 Roman Europe from the less civilised nations on the 

 other side of these two great rivers. On the east 

 the Empire was bounded by the mountains of Armenia, 

 by a part of the Euphrates, and by the desert of Arabia. 



What seems so remarkable, is, that there should 

 have been a sufficiently large army of Romans to 

 subjugate the vast number of inhabitants occupying 

 these regions ; it is a convincing proof of the power 

 that may be exercised over uncivilised people by a 

 well-disciplined, armed force, bearing with them (into 

 the countries which they invade) the elements of peace 

 and civilisation, as well as the destructive and awe- 

 inspiring horrors of war. 



It was into the East that the Roman Empire 



