e sciences, because their discoveries are so immediately
put to the proof in practice and so little disengage themselves into
express theory from their applications.

But before we proceed to reckon up their contributions to European
civilization it is well to correct a misconception which arises only too
easily from an accident of our education. It is the custom in England to
concentrate attention upon a brief period in the history of Rome,
ignoring on the one hand the early Republican period and on the other
the later Imperial. There is thus lost to our imaginations those figures
and their deeds which seemed for example to Shakespeare most
characteristically Roman and to our more thoughtful consideration those
achievements which most deeply moulded the fabric of Europe. The latter
is the greater loss, and here we must remember that it is the history of
_Imperial_ Rome that is most relevant to our purpose and most
informative. Under the Empire Rome worked as a master, no longer as an
apprentice or a journeyman. The theatre of her civilizing activities was
here little less than the whole world then known, and the boast is not
unjustified that she made into a city what had formerly been but a
world, as we might say, merely a geographical expression. The record of
that progress reads to us too much as a narrative of incessant warfare,
and we are accustomed to think of her empire as a gigantic military
power, but in reality it was in aim and result essentially pacific, and
so appeared to those who lived under her sway. To them the name of her
empire was the 'Roman peace'. It was as such that the memory of it
haunted the minds of men when it too broke down from internal economic
disorders and external pressure, and a distracted and divided Europe
looked back to it as the pattern for a restored civilization.

The aim and result of the Roman Empire was peace, a world-wide peace.
It is true that this end was not very articulately defined by those who
pursued it, but (perhaps just because of that) the means to it were more
practically designed and more effectively executed. The civilized world
was one and to be treated as one; it was still Rome under a single
government and a single head. There arose then the idea of a supreme
sovereignty one and indivisible, that was the absolutely indispensable
condition of a world peace. But the necessity of organization was
equally grasped, insisted upon, realized. The civilized world was