Beginnings of Romanic Development

But the fact that this great people was ruined by the Transalpine wars
of Caesar, was not the most important result of that grand enterprise;
far more momentous than the negative was the positive result.
It hardly admits of a doubt that, if the rule of the senate
had prolonged its semblance of life for some generations
longer, the migration of peoples, as it is called, would have
occurred four hundred years sooner than it did, and would have
occurred at a time when the Italian civilization had not become
naturalized either in Gaul, or on the Danube, or in Africa and
Spain. Inasmuch as the great general and statesman of Rome
with sure glance perceived in the German tribes the rival antagonists
of the Romano-Greek world; inasmuch as with firm hand he established
the new system of aggressive defence down even to its details,
and taught men to protect the frontiers of the empire by rivers
or artificial ramparts, to colonize the nearest barbarian tribes along
the frontier with the view of warding off the more remote,
and to recruit the Roman army by enlistment from the enemy's country;
he gained for the Hellenico-Italian culture the interval necessary
to civilize the west just as it had already civilized the east.
Ordinary men see the fruits of their action; the seed sown by men
of genius germinates slowly. Centuries elapsed before men understood
that Alexander had not merely erected an ephemeral kingdom
in the east, but had carried Hellenism to Asia; centuries again
elapsed before men understood that Caesar had not merely conquered
a new province for the Romans, but had laid the foundation
for the Romanizing of the regions of the west. It was only a late
posterity that perceived the meaning of those expeditions
to England and Germany, so inconsiderate in a military point of view,
and so barren of immediate result. An immense circle of peoples,
whose existence and condition hitherto were known barely through
the reports--mingling some truth with much fiction--of the mariner
and the trader, was disclosed by this means to the Greek and Roman
world. "Daily," it is said in a Roman writing of May 698,
"the letters and messages from Gaul are announcing names of peoples,
cantons, and regions hitherto unknown to us." This enlargement
of the historical horizon by the expeditions of Caesar beyond
the Alps was as significant an event in the world's history
as the exploring of America by Europ