INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 181 



ehaiacters were first deciphered, and how numerous are the 

 armies ai?d the caravans which, for thousands of years, have 

 passed and repassed without ever divining their import ! 



The basin of the Mediterranean, more especially in its va 

 ried northern peninsulas, certainly constituted the starting 

 point of the intellectual and political culture of those nations 

 who now possess what we may hope is destined to prove an 

 imperishable and daily increasing treasure of scientific knowl- 

 edge and of creative artistic powers, and who have spread 

 civihzation, and, with it, servitude at first, but subsequently 

 freedom, over another hemisphere. Happily, in our hemi- 

 sphere, under the favor of a propitious destiny, unity and di- 

 versity are gracefully blended together. The elements taken 

 up have been no less heterogeneous in their nature than in the 

 affinities and transformations effected under the influence of 

 the sharply-contrasting pecufiarities and individual character- 

 istics of the several races of men by whom Europe has been 

 peopled. Even beyond the ocean, the reflection of these con- 

 trasts may still be traced in the colonies and settlements which 

 have already become powerful free states, or wMch, it is hoped, 

 may still develop for themselves an equal amount of political 

 freedom. 



The Roman dominion, in its monarchical form under the 

 Csesars, considered according to its area,* was certainly ex- 

 ceeded in absolute magnitude by the Chinese empire under the 

 dynasty of Thsin and the Eastern Han (from thirty years be- 

 fore to one hundred and sixteen years after our era), by the 

 Mongolian empire under Genghis Khan, and by the present 

 area of the Russian empire in Europe and Asia ; but, with 

 the single exception of the Spanish monarchy — as long as it 

 extended over the new world — there has never been combined 

 under one scepter a greater number of countries favored by 

 climate, fertility, and position, than those comprised under the 

 Roman empire from Augustus to Constantine. 



This empire, extending from the western extremity of Eu- 

 rope to the Euphrates, from Britain and part of Caledonia to 

 Gsetulia and the confines of the Libyan desert, manifested not 



* The superficial area of the Roman empire under Augustus is calcu- 

 lated by Professor Berghaus, the author of the excellent Physical Atlas, 

 at rather more than 400.000 geographical square miles (according to the 

 boundaries assumed by Heeren, in his Oeschichte der Slaaten des Alter- 

 t'hums., 8. 403-470), or about one fourth greater than the extent of 

 1,600,000 square miles assigned by Gibbon, in his History of the Decline 

 and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i., chap, i., p. 30, but which h« rn 

 deed gives as a very uncertain estimate. 



