Outside was the wild chaos of barbarism.

Rome kept it back from end to end of Europe and across a thousand miles of western Asia.

Through all the storms of barbarian onset, through the carnage of uncounted wars, through plagues which struck whole multitudes down to a disastrous death, through civil discord and sedition and domestic treachery, the work went on.

It was not always marked by special insight or intelligence.

The men who carried it out were not for the most part first-rate statesmen or first-rate generals.