s,
and the Romans retained their foremost place.

[Footnote 10: See _Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome_,
page 1.]

[Footnote 11: See _Brennus Burns Rome_, page 110.]

Not till more than a century later were they brought into serious
conflict with the Greeks. In the year B.C. 280, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus,
who had won a temporary leadership over a portion of the Grecian land,
undertook the conquest of the West.[12] Fifty years before, Alexander
with far greater power might have been victorious over a feebler Rome.
Pyrrhus failed completely. If the Romans had less dash and a less wide
experience of varied warfare than his followers, they had far more of
true, heroic endurance. The Greeks had reached that stage of individual
culture where they were much too selfishly intelligent to be willing to
die in battle. Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy. Grecian brilliancy was
helpless against Roman strength of union.

[Footnote 12: See _First Battle between Greeks and Romans_, page 166.]

Then came the far more serious contest between Rome and Carthage.[13]
Carthage was a Phoenician, a Semite state; and hers was the last, the
most gigantic struggle made by Semitism to recover its waning
superiority, to dominate the ancient world. Three times in three
tremendous wars did she and Rome put forth their utmost strength against
each other. Hannibal, perhaps the greatest military genius who ever
lived, fought upon the side of Carthage. At one time Rome seemed
crushed, helpless before him.[14] Yet in the end Rome won.[15] It was
not by the brilliancy of her commanders, not by the superiority of her
resources. It was the grim, cool courage of the Aryan mind, showing
strongest and calmest when face to face with ruin.

[Footnote 13: See _The Punic Wars_, page 179.]

[Footnote 14: See _Battle of the Metaurus_, page 195.]

[Footnote 15: See _Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and
Subjugates Carthage_, page 224.]

Our modern philosophers, being Aryan, assure us that the victory of
Carthage would have been an irretrievable disaster to mankind; that her
falsity, her narrow selfishness, her bloody inhumanity, would have
stifled all progress; that her dominion would have been the tyranny of a
few heartless masters over a world of tortured slaves. On the other
hand, Rome up to this point had certainly been a generous mistress to
her subjects. She had left them peace and prosperity among themselves;
she had given them as much