Benefits of Roman Sußremacy 
261 
return the products of other regions. The Spanish cities in that 
quarter were many and populous; the. arts and literature were 
sedulously cultivated, and, as we have seen, some of the leading 
authors in Latin letters were of Spanish origin and training. 
In Gaul, the southern region had already received civilization 
from Greek settlers, and the Roman conquest carried material 
and intellectual culture to the centre and north of the land, and 
across the narrow sea to Brifain, where Roman supremacy 
secured for the people three centuries of peace and prosperity. 
There can be no doubt that human happiness was largely in- 
creased in these regions of the world by a dominion which put 
an end to intertribal conflicts, and gave men the prime blessing 
of orderly and systematic rule. 
16. But the chief benefits derived by the world from Rome’s 
imperial sway were the spread of the Greek culture, Spread of 
and the clear course made for the progress of Srsek culture 
Christianity. To Rome’s controlling power we owe anity. 
the preservation of Greek ideas in Greek literature, and the 
transmission to our times of some of the greatest productions 
of the Greek mind—works which Roman imitation took as the 
highest models of excellence, and which Roman admiration 
preserved, by multiplication of copies, for the good of future 
ages. As to Christianity, the spread of Greek philosophy over 
the world after the conquests of Alexander the Great had pre- 
pared the higher class of men for the reception of still nobler 
lessons, and the free intercourse among the nations which 
Roman supremacy secured, carried the teachers and preachers 
of the new religion to many a region which must have been 
otherwise inaccessible to their efforts and their devotion. It 
was thus that, long before the official establishment of the faith 
by Constantine, the surviving strongholds of Paganism were 
steadily and imperceptibly sapped, and, without formal assault 
or vigorous shock, crumbled into noiseless and irreparable 
ruin. 
17. The last Roman emperor of the West was a child, called, 
as if in derision, Rom'ulus Augus’tulus, the One rg orm 
x u . e 
name being that of the city’s mythical founder, the Western 
other (“ Augustus the little”) a parody of the style Empire. 
of him who organized the empire. Augustulus became nominal 
ruler in A.D. 475, and in 476 was overthrown by the invasion 
of some German tribes, of which the chief was called the 
Heruli (h&ru-li). Their leader. Odoa'cer, took the title of 
Een