de like dissolving views
into each other? Warned by the example of those who have permitted the
shadows of their own imagination to fall upon the scene, and have
mistaken them for a part of it, I shall endeavour to apply the test of
common sense to the facts of which it will be necessary to treat; and,
believing that man has ever been the same in his modes of thought and
motives of action, I shall judge of past occurrences in the same way as
of those of our own times.

[Sidenote: Triple form of Roman power.]

In its entire form the Roman power consists of two theocracies, with a
military domination intercalated. The first of these theocracies
corresponds to the fabulous period of the kings; the military domination
to the time of the republic and earlier Caesars; the second theocracy to
that of the Christian emperors and the Popes.

[Sidenote: The first theocracy and legendary times.]

[Sidenote: Early Roman history.]

The first theocracy is so enveloped in legends and fictions that it is
impossible to give a satisfactory account of it. The biographies of the
kings offer such undeniable evidence of being mere romances, that, since
the time of Niebuhr, they have been received by historians in that
light. But during the reigns of the pagan emperors it was not safe in
Rome to insinuate publicly any disbelief in such honoured legends as
those of the wolf that suckled the foundlings; the ascent of Romulus
into heaven; the nymph Egeria; the duel of the Horatii and Curiatii; the
leaping of Curtius into the gulf on his horse; the cutting of a flint
with a razor by Tarquin; the Sibyl and her books. The modern historian
has, therefore, only very little reliable material. He may admit that
the Romans and Sabines coalesced; that they conquered the Albans and
Latins; that thousands of the latter were transplanted to Mount Aventine
and made plebeians; these movements being the origin of the castes which
long afflicted Rome, the vanquished people constituting a subordinate
class; that at first the chief occupation was agriculture, the nature of
which is not only to accustom men to the gradations of rank, such as the
proprietor of the land, the overseer, the labourer, but also to the
cultivation of religious sentiment, and even the cherishing of
superstition; that, besides the more honourable occupations in which the
rising state was engaged, she had, from the beginning, indulged in
aggressive war, and was therefore perpetually lia