ing in commerce doing so only that it may live more expansively.
This was a people cold and sad, devoted to lucre and to the laying up of
money, disdainful of ideals, with no other industry than agriculture and
war, squeezing the last grain of wheat from their lands, and robbing the
enemy; methodical, lacking initiative and youthfulness.

"This people," said the Athenian to himself, "seems never to have been
as young as twenty. Even the children seem to be born old."

Actaeon with his Grecian sagacity thought over what he had seen within
the two days; the cruel discipline of the family, of the religion, and
of the State, which held the citizens in subjection; their absolute
ignorance of poetry and art; that stern training, sad, based only on
duty, which obliged every Roman to a long and painful obedience so that
he might some day be able to command.

The father, who in Greece was a friend, in Rome was a tyrant. For the
Latin city there existed no other member of the family than the father;
the wife, the children, the clients, were almost on the level of slaves;
they were instruments of toil, without rights and without name. The gods
heard only him; in his house he was priest and judge; he could kill his
wife, sell the children three times over, and his authority over the
offspring persisted down the years; the conquering consul, the
omnipotent senator, trembled when in his father's presence; and in this
gloomy and despotic organization, more stern even than that of Sparta,
Actaeon divined a latent force cradled in mystery which some day should
burst its bonds, clasping the world as in an embrace of iron. The Greek
detested this gloomy nation, but it held his admiration.

Its stamina, the tough and bellicose spirit of the race, were revealed
in the Forum. The Capitol on the summit of the sacred mount was a
veritable fortress, with naked and gloomy walls, destitute of such
decorations as made the citadel of Athens glow with an eternal smile.
The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with its low roof and its row of
flattened, tower-like columns, barely rose above the city ramparts.
Below, in the Forum, prevailed a similar grave and gloomy ugliness. The
buildings were low and heavy; they seemed rather constructions of war
than temples of the gods and public buildings. The great network of
highroads starting from the Forum was the only embellishment in which
Rome interested herself, and that because of their usefulness in
trans