formally Italian towns in Spain
and southern Gaul, we need only recall the numerous troops of burgesses
raised by Sertorius and Pompeius in Spain, by Caesar in Gaul,
by Juba in Numidia, by the constitutional party in Africa, Macedonia,
Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete; the Latin lyre--ill-tuned doubtless--
on which the town-poets of Corduba as early as the Sertorian war
sang the praises of the Roman generals; and the translations
of Greek poetry valued on account of their very elegance of language,
which the earliest extra-Italian poet of note, the Transalpine
Publius Terentius Varro of the Aude, published
shortly after Caesar's death.

On the other hand the interpenetration of the Latin and Hellenic
character was, we might say, as old as Rome. On occasion
of the union of Italy the conquering Latin nation had assimilated
to itself all the other conquered nationalities, excepting only
the Greek, which was received just as it stood without any attempt
at external amalgamation. Wherever the Roman legionary went,
the Greek schoolmaster, no less a conqueror in his own way, followed;
at an early date we find famous teachers of the Greek language
settled on the Guadalquivir, and Greek was as well taught as Latin
in the institute of Osca. The higher Roman culture itself
was in fact nothing else than the proclamation of the great gospel
of Hellenic manners and art in the Italian idiom; against the modest
pretension of the civilizing conquerors to proclaim it first of all
in their own language to the barbarians of the west the Hellene
at least could not loudly protest. Already the Greek every where--
and, most decidedly, just where the national feeling was purest
and strongest, on the frontiers threatened by barbaric denationalization,
e. g. in Massilia, on the north coast of the Black Sea,
and on the Euphrates and Tigris--descried the protector and avenger
of Hellenism in Rome; and in fact the foundation of towns by Pompeius
in the far east resumed after an interruption of centuries
the beneficent work of Alexander.

The idea of an Italo-Hellenic empire with two languages
and a single nationality was not new--otherwise it would have been
nothing but a blunder; but the development of it from floating projects
to a firmly-grasped conception, from scattered initial efforts
to the laying of a concentrated foundation, was the work of the third
and greatest of the democratic statesmen of Rome.

The Ruling Nations
The Jews