teful moment for her, too. The Greeks had long
lost what capacity they had ever had for stable politics.
Flamininus might hand them back their liberties with the utmost
genuineness of heart; but they were not in a condition to use
the gift. Rome soon found that she had no choice but to annex
them, one way or another. They were her proteges; and Antiochus
attacked them;--so then Antiochus had to be fought and conquered.
That fool had great Hannibal with him, and resources with which
Hannibal might have crushed Rome; but it did not suit Antiochus
that the glory should be Hannibal's. Then presently Attalus
bequeathed Pergamum to the Senate; which involved Rome in Asia
Minor. So step by step she was compelled to conquer the East.

Now there was a far greater disparity of civilization between
Rome and this Hellenistic Orient and half-orientalized Greece,
than appeared afterwards between the Romans and Spaniards and
Gauls. Spain, very soon after Augustus completed its conquest,
was producing most of the brightest minds in Latin literature:
the influx of important egos had hardly passed from Italy before
it began to appear in Spain. Had not Rome become the world
metropolis, capable of attracting to herself all elements of
greatness from every part of the Mediterranean world, we should
think of the first century A.D., as a great Spanish Age. Gaul,
too, within a couple of generations of Ceasar's devastating
exploits there, had become another Egypt for wealth and
industries. The grandson's of the Vercingetorixes and Dumnorixes
were living more splendidly, and as culturedly, in larger and
better villas than the patricians of Italy; as Ferrero shows.
We may judge, too, that there was a like quick rise of manvantaric
conditions in Britain after the Claudian conquest: we have
news of Agricola's speaking of the "labored studies of the
Gauls," as if that people were then famed for learning,--to
which, he said, he preferred the "quick wits and natural genius
of the Britons." And here I may mention that, even before the
conquest of Gaul, Caesar's own tutor was a man of that nation, a
master of Greek and Latin learning;--but try to imagine a Roman
tutoring Epaminondas or Pelopidas! So we may gather that a touch
from Italy--by that time highly cultured,--was enough to light up
those Celtic countries at once; and infer from that that no such
long pralayic conditions had obtained in them as had obtained in
Italy during the ce