institutions. A new and barbarous country
may prevail, by the aid of hardy warriors, adventurous and needy, over the
civilized nations which have been famous for a thousand years, but the
conquered country almost invariably has transmitted its habits and
institutions among the conquerors, so much more majestic are ideas than
any display of victorious brute forces. Dynasties are succeeded by
dynasties, but civilization survives, when any material exists on which it
can work.

Athens was never a greater power in the world than at the time her
political ruin was consummated. Hence the political changes of nations,
which form the bulk of all histories, are insignificant in comparison with
those ideas and institutions which gradually transform the habits and
opinions of ordinary life. Yet it is these silent and gradual changes
which escape the notice of historians, and are the most difficult to be
understood and explained, for lack of sufficient and definite knowledge.
Moreover, it is the feats of extraordinary individuals in stirring
enterprise and heroism which have thus far proved the great attraction of
past ages to ordinary minds. No history, truly philosophical, would be
extensively read by any people, in any age, and least of all by the young,
in the process of education.

The remaining history of Greece has little interest until the Roman
conquests, which will be presented in the next book.

BOOK III.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ROME IN ITS INFANCY, UNDER KINGS.

In presenting the growth of that great power which gradually absorbed all
other States and monarchies so as to form the largest empire ever known on
earth, I shall omit a notice of all other States, in Italy and Europe,
until they were brought into direct collision with Rome herself.

(M761) The early history of Rome is involved in obscurity, and although
many great writers have expended vast learning and ingenuity in tracing
the origin of the city and its inhabitants, still but little has been
established on an incontrovertible basis. We look to poetry and legends
for the foundation of the "Eternal City."

(M762) These legends are of peculiar interest. AEneas, in his flight from
Troy, after many adventures, reaches Italy, marries the daughter of
Latinus, king of the people, who then lived in Latium, and builds a city,
which he names Lavinium, and unites his Tr