rm for the changes which
Rome underwent from the time when foreign influences began to tell upon
her until the beginning of the republic. He forms a convenient title
therefore for certain phases of Rome's growth. And yet even this is not
strictly correct, for Servius stands not so much for the coming into
existence of certain facts, as for the recognition of the existence of
these facts. The facts themselves were of slow growth, covering probably
centuries, but the actions resulting from them, and the outward changes
in society, came thick and fast and may well have taken place, all of
them, within the limits of one man's life. The foundation fact upon
which all these changes were based is the influence of the outside world
on the Roman community. Until this time there had been little to
differentiate Rome from any other of the hill-communities of Italy, of
which there were scores in her immediate neighbourhood; nor was she the
only one to come into contact with the outside world. It was the effect
which that influence had upon her as contrasted with her neighbours
which made the difference. When we ask why this influence affected her
differently we find no satisfactory answer, and are in the presence of a
mystery--the world-old insoluble mystery of the superiority of one tribe
or one individual over others apparently of the same class. Political
history is wont to tell this chapter of Rome's story under the title of
the "Rise of the Plebeians," but the presence of the Plebeians was only
the outward symbol of an inward change. This change was the breaking up
of the monotonous one-class society of the primitive community with its
one--agricultural--interest, and the formation of a variegated
many-class society with manifold interests, such as trade, handicraft,
and politics. It was the awakening of Rome into a world-life out of her
century-long undisturbed bucolic slumber.

There were at this time two peoples in Italy, who by reason of their
older culture were able to be Rome's teachers. One lay to the north of
her, the mysterious Etruscans, whose culture fortunately for Rome had
only a very moderate influence, because the Etruscan culture had already
lost much of its virility, possibly also because it was distinctly felt
to be foreign, and hence could effect no insidious entry, and probably
because Rome was at this time too strong and young and clean to take
anything but the best from Etruria. The other lay to the south,