f the spiritual possibilities of the Gaul; but the
Crest-Wave was coming, and the future was with Italy. She had
none of the high-souled chivalry of the Samnite; but she was the
heart of Italy, and the point from which Italy must expand. She
was hard, tough, and based on the soil; and that soil, as it
happened, the laya center,--a sort of fire-fountain from within
and the unseen. You stood on the Seven Hills, and let heaven and
hell conspire together, you _could not_ be defeated. Gauls,
Samnites, Latins,--all that ever attacked her,--were but taking a
house-cloth to dry up a running spring. The Crest-Wave was
coming to Italy; whose vital forces, all centrifugal before,
must now be made to turn and flow towards the center. That was
Rome; and as they would not flow to her of their own good will,
out she must go and gather them in. Long afterwards, when the
Caesars and Augusti of the West left her for Milan and Ravenna,
it was because the Crest-Wave was departing, the forces turning
centrifugal, and Italy breaking to pieces; long afterwards
again, in the eighteen-seventies, when the Crest-Wave was
returning, Italy must flow in centripetally to Rome; no Turin,
no Florence would do.

So, by 264 B.C., she had conquered Italy. Then, still land-hungry,
she stepped over into Sicily, invited by certain rascals in
Messana, and light-heartedly challenged the Mistress of the
Western Seas. At this point the stream is leaving Balbus's
fields and Ahenobarbus's cattle, and coming to the broad waters,
where the ships of the world ride in.

XVII. ROME PARVENUE *

The Punic War was not forced on Rome. She had no good motive for
it; not even a decent excuse. It was simply that she was
accustomed to do the next thing; and Carthage presented itself
as the next thing to fight,--Sicily, the next thing to be
conquered. The war lasted from 264 to 241; and at the end of it
Rome found herself out of Italy; mistress of Sicily, Sardinia,
and Corsica. The Italian laya center had expanded; Italy had
boiled over. It was just the time when Ts'in at the other end of
the world was conquering China, and the Far Eastern Manvantara
was beginning. Manvantaras do not begin or end anywhere, I
imagine, without some cyclic event marking it in all other parts
of the world.

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* This lecture, like the preceding one, is based on Mr. J. H.
Stobart's, _The Grandeur that was Rome._
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We have heard much talk of how disa