THE ROMANIZATION OF THE EMPIRE Historians seldom praise the Roman Empire.

They regard it as a period of death and despotism, from which political freedom and creative genius and the energies of the speculative intellect were all alike excluded.
There is, unquestionably, much truth in this judgement.

The world of the Empire was indeed, as Mommsen has called it, an old world.

Behind it lay the dreams and experiments, the self-convicted follies and disillusioned wisdom of many centuries.

Before it lay no untravelled region such as revealed itself to our forefathers at the Renaissance or to our fathers fifty years ago.