pollo on the Palatine, most magnificent, with a great public
library attached. The first public library in Rome had been
built by Asinius Pollio nine years before; soon they became
common. Agrippa busied himself building the Pantheon; also
public baths, of which he was responsible for a hundred and
seventy within the limits of the city. Fair play to the Romans,
they washed. All classes had their daily baths; all good houses
had hot baths and swimming-tanks. The outer Rome he found in
brick and left in marble:--but the inner Rome he had to rebuild
was much more ruinous than the outer; as for the material he
found it built of--well, it would be daring optimism and
euphemism to call those Romans _bricks_--says someone.

Time had brought southern Europe to the point where national
distinctions were disappearing. No nation could now stand apart.
Greek or Egyptian or Gaul, all were, or might be, or soon would
be, Romans; and if any ego with important things to say should
incarnate anywhere, what he said should be heard all round the
Middle Sea. This too is a part of the method of natural Law;
which now splits the world into little fragments, the nations,
and lets them evolve apart, bringing to light by the intensive
culture of their nationalisms what hidden possibilities lie
latent in their own soils and atmospheres;--an anon welds them
into one, that all these accomplished separate evolutions may
play upon each other, interact,--every element quickening and
quickened by the contact. In the centrifugal or heterogenizing
cycles national souls are evolved; in the centripetal or
homogenizing they are given freedom to affect the world. We have
seen what such fusion meant for China; perhaps some day we may
see what such fusion may mean for the world entire. In Augustus'
time, fusion was to do something for the Mediterranean basin. If
he had been an Occultist, to know it, his great cards lay in
Italy and Spain: the former with her cycle of productiveness due
to continue, shall we say until about 40 A.D.?--the latter with
hers due soon to begin.

Well, it does look rather as if he knew it. We shall see
presently how he dealt with Italy; within two years of his
triumph he was turning his attention to Spain, still only
partly conquered. We may picture that country, from its first
appearance in history until this time we are speaking of, as in
something like modern Balkan conditions. Hamilcar Barca, a great
proud ge