ire, and the whole world hoped
that the master would write it; but he contented himself with a survey
of the provinces. The closing years of his life were devoted to a
gigantic treatise on Roman Criminal Law, and to editions of Jordanes,
Cassiodorus, the Theodosian Code and the Liber Pontificalis, thus
enlarging the sphere of his operations till Rome was swallowed up in the
Middle Ages. His publications extended over sixty years. There is no
immaturity in his early works and no decline in the later. The
imaginative and critical faculties met and balanced, large vision mating
with a genius for detail. The complete assimilation and reproduction of
a classical civilization of which scholars have dreamed ever since
Scaliger has been achieved by Mommsen alone. Rome before Mommsen was
like modern Europe before Ranke. We may truly say of him, as was said of
Augustus, that he found it of brick and left it of marble.

Mommsen, like Ranke, was the founder of a school; and his inspiration
has been felt by every worker in the field of Roman studies. His
successors naturally confine themselves to some special province or
period. Gaetano de Sanctis is far advanced in the most ambitious history
of the Republic that has been attempted in the last half-century.
Ferrero's _Greatness and Decline of Rome_, though frowned on by
scholars, aroused world-wide interest by interpreting the fall of the
Republic in terms of economics and psychology. The political and social
crises which fill the century from Sulla to Augustus, he argues, were
due to the change of customs caused by the augmentation of wealth,
expenditure, and needs. Of greater value are the attempts to fill in
different sections of the vast canvas of Imperial Rome, such as
Gardthausen's monumental survey of the reign of Augustus, Camille
Jullian's volumes on Gaul, and Professor Haverfield's slender monographs
on Britain. Roman life and culture have been diligently explored; but
the extreme paucity of materials makes the recovery of the atmosphere of
the early Republic almost impossible. The most daring attempt was made
by Fustel de Coulanges in _La Cite Antique_, which offered a complete
interpretation of early society in terms of religion. Less harmonious
but more convincing pictures of religious life have been painted by
Warde Fowler, while the civilization of the Empire has been successively
analysed in the fascinating and authoritative works of Friedlaender,
Boissier, and Dill.