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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