Importance of Roman History. 
5 
NEN A 
SECTION 11L 
HISTORY OF ROME. 
CHAPTER LI 
PRELIMINARY SKETCH. 
I. The greatness of Roman history lies in the fact that it is, 
in a large sense, the history of the world from the Tmpertance ol 
time of Rome’s supremacy down to the present day. Roman his- 
Out of the Roman Empire arose the modern state *°Y- 
system of Europe, and the Roman language, law, and institu- 
tions are still, in changed forms, alive and active in the modern 
world. The influence of Palestine on our religion and of Greece 
on our art and literature, have to a great extent been wrought 
on us through Rome, which preserved and transmitted those 
great elements of our civilization. In Rome, as she established 
her power, all ancient history is lost; and out of Rome all 
modern history comes. In the history of Rome we see how the 
power of a single small town grew into that of a moderate-sized 
territory, from that into a country, from a country into a world. 
It was the mission of Rome in history thus to bring all the 
civilized peoples of the West, including Western Asia, under 
one dominion and one bondage; and, this being a political con- 
dition which could only end in conquest from without, the cul- 
ture which she had gathered up into one vast reservoir was given 
off in streams that, in due season, fertilized the mental soil of 
rude and restless nations who stepped into Rome’s place. 
2. Owing to special circumstances the early history of Rome, 
though of much later date than the early history of Obsensity of 
Greece, is involved in great obscurity. The burn- early Roman 
ing of Rome by the Gauls in B.C. 390 destroyed history. 
almost all the national records, and we are dependent for our 
knowledge of the earlier times on historians to whom the science 
of historical criticism was unknown, and who derived their in- 
formation from legends embodied in lays, and from other un- 
trustworthy sources,®? Little reliance can be placed on the 
2 The enrliest Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, lived during the second Punic 
War, some 500 years after the renutend foundation of Rame. 
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