recian cities, of wild animals for the amphitheatre, of marble, of the
spoils of eastern cities, of military engines and stores, and of horses,
required very large fleets and thousands of mariners, which probably
belonged chiefly to great maritime cities. These cities with their
dependencies required even more vessels for communication with one
another than for Rome herself,--the great central object of enterprise
and cupidity.

In this survey of ancient cities I have not yet spoken of the great
central city,--the City of the Seven Hills, to which all the world was
tributary. Whatever was costly or rare or beautiful, in Greece or Asia
or Egypt, was appropriated by her citizen kings, since citizens were
provincial governors. All the great highways, from the Atlantic to the
Tigris, converged to the capital,--all roads led to Rome; all the ships
of Alexandria and Carthage and Tarentum, and other commercial capitals,
were employed in furnishing her with luxuries or necessities. Never was
there so proud a city as this "Epitome of the Universe." London, Paris,
Vienna, Constantinople, St. Petersburg, Berlin, are great centres of
fashion and power; but they are rivals, and excel only in some great
department of human enterprise and genius, as in letters, or fashions,
or commerce, or manufactures,--centres of influence and power in the
countries of which they are capitals, yet they do not monopolize the
wealth and energies of the world. London may contain more people than
did ancient Rome, and may possess more commercial wealth; but London
represents only the British monarchy, not a universal empire. Rome,
however, monopolized every thing, and controlled all nations and
peoples; she could shut up the schools of Athens, or disperse the ships
of Alexandria, or regulate the shops of Antioch. What Lyons and Bordeaux
are to Paris, Corinth and Babylon were to Rome,--mere dependent cities.
Paul, condemned at Jerusalem, stretched out his arms to Rome, and Rome
protected him. The philosophers of Greece were the tutors of Roman
nobility. The kings of the East resorted to the palaces of Mount
Palatine for favors or safety; the governors of Syria and Egypt,
reigning in the palaces of ancient kings, returned to Rome to squander
the riches they had accumulated. Senators and nobles took their turn as
sovereign rulers of all the known countries of the world. The halls in
which Darius and Alexander and Pericles and Croesus and Solomon and
Cleopa