Character of the Romans.--Sketch of their conquests.--On strict law, and the law of equity in its application to History, and according to the idea of divine justice.--Commencement of the Christian dispensation.
Instead of that astonishing variety in the states, the races, the political constitutions, the manners, styles of art and modes of intellectual cultivation, which divided from its very origin the social existence of Greece--a division which gave a more rich and diversified aspect to Greek civilization--the ancient history of Italy shews us, on the contrary, how every thing merged more and more in the one, eternal, imperishable, ever-prosperous, ever-progressive, and at last all-devouring, city--Rome. The first ages, indeed, of Italy--the primitive nations that settled that country--such as the Pelasgi, whose early historical existence is attested by those Cyclopean, or more properly, Pelasgic walls and constructions still extant there--the Etruscans, (according to some authors, descended from the more northern race of Rhœtians) from whom the Romans borrowed so many of their idolatrous rites and customs--the Sabines and Samnites, the Latins and the Trojans--lastly the Celts in Northern, and the Greeks in Southern, Italy--all in their several relations to one another, and in the various commixture of their origin and progress, open a wide field of intricate investigation and perplexing research to the historical enquirer. But from the general point of view taken in universal history, all this antiquarian learning soon falls into the back-ground, in the presence of that great central city which quickly absorbs into itself all the ancient states of Italy, and Italy itself, and which, though originally composed of many heterogeneous elements--Latin, Sabine and Etruscan--still was very early moulded into an unity of character--and whose ulterior growth and progress, slow indeed at first, but soon as fearfully rapid as it was immeasurably great, principally attracts the notice of the historical observer. In the later, and still more in the early, ages of Rome, the national idolatry was less poetically wrought and adorned than that of the Greeks--it was altogether much simpler, ruder and more serious than the latter. Even the word _religio_, to take it in its first signification as a second tie, corresponds to a far more definite and serious object than can be found in the gay mythology of the popular religion of the Greeks. Idolatrous rites were closely interwoven into the whole life of the ancient Romans. As the twins of Mars, Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by the she-wolf, were called the founders of the city; so Mars himself was honoured by the Romans as their real progenitor, and principal national divinity--particularly under the name of Gradivus, that is to say the swift for battle, or the strider of the earth. The sacred shields of brass which, on certain appointed festivals, were borne in the military dances, the Palladium, the sceptre of the venerable Priam, formed, together with similar relics of antiquity, the seven holy pledges of the eternal duration and ever flourishing increase of the seven-hilled city, which was honoured under three different names; one whereof was ever kept secret--while the other two referred to its blooming strength and ever enduring power. The ancient cities of the Greeks, those of the Italian nations, whether akin to them, or otherwise, possessed indeed their tutelary deities, their particular sanctuaries, their highly revered Palladium, some ancient oracles, and certain religious rites and festivals consecrated to their honour. But it would not be easy to find another example where the traditionary reverence, we might almost say, the old hereditary deification of the city, had from the earliest period, taken such deep root in the minds of men; and where such a formal worship was so intimately interwoven with manners, customs, and even maxims of state, as among the Romans. And when an universal monarchy had sprung out from this single city, it was still that city--it was still eternal Rome that was ever regarded, not merely as the centre, but as the essence of the whole--the personified conception of the state--the grand idea of the empire.