which the world has produced. It came to pass that "Urbis et orbis"
was not a false boast. Gradually growing from the little nest of robbers
established on the banks of the Tiber, the people of Rome learned how to
spread their arms over all the known world, and to conquer and rule,
while they drew to themselves all that the ingenuity and industry of
other people had produced. To do this, there must have been not only
courage and persistence, but intelligence, patriotism, and superior
excellence in that art of combination of which government consists. But
yet, when we look back, it is hard to say when were the palmy days of
Rome. When did those virtues shine by which her power was founded? When
was that wisdom best exhibited from which came her capacity for ruling?
Not in the time of her early kings, whose mythic virtues, if they
existed, were concerned but in small matters; for the Rome of the kings
claimed a jurisdiction extending as yet but a few miles from the city.
And from the time of their expulsion, Rome, though she was rising in
power, was rising slowly, and through such difficulties that the reader
of history, did he not know the future, would think from time to time
that the day of her destruction had come upon her. Not when Brennus was
at Rome with his Gauls, a hundred and twenty-five years after the
expulsion of the kings, could Rome be said to have been great; nor when,
fifty or sixty years afterward, the Roman army--the only army which Rome
then possessed--had to lay down its arms in the Caudine Forks and pass
under the Samnite yoke. Then, when the Samnite wars were ended, and Rome
was mistress in Italy--mistress, after all, of no more than Southern
Italy--the Punic wars began. It could hardly have been during that long
contest with Carthage, which was carried on for nearly fifty years, that
the palmy days of Rome were at their best. Hannibal seems always to be
the master. Trebia, Thrasymene and Cannae, year after year, threaten
complete destruction to the State. Then comes the great Scipio; and no
doubt, if we must mark an era of Roman greatness, it would be that of
the battle of Zama and the submission of Carthage, 201 years before
Christ. But with Scipio there springs up the idea of personal ambition;
and in the Macedonian and Greek wars that follow, though the arm of Rome
is becoming stronger every day, and her shoulders broader, there is
already the glamour of her decline in virtue. Her dealings with
An