by them; beyond the Euphrates and Tigris they, the Romans, never gained a footing, whilst from tropical Africa they were entirely excluded. Thus at no time were they called on to solve the problem as to the possibility of European life maintaining its ground in tropical regions; at no period were they called upon to give an opinion on the momentous question which now agitates the world, the admission, namely, of the primitive coloured races of men into the bosom of civilized society.[61] “Wheresoever the Roman conquered, he inhabits;” a just observation we owe to Seneca, confirmed by the history of that wonderful people. As their conquests were confined to countries in which the natives of Italy could at that time live and thrive, the rapid extension of their empire, language, and forms of civilization, need not be wondered at. Thus Rome successively became mistress of many nations and races, but these were races with whom the Romans could freely amalgamate; at no period of her history were they called on to contend with the two great questions, the one social the other physical, involved in the attempt to occupy by a white race a tropical country, and a land inhabited by a purely savage race of coloured men; the problems presented by modern history of a European race attempting to hold India by the sword, to colonize the American world from the Polar Sea to the Land of Fire, to inhabit, if not to cultivate, the insalubrious Antilles, the banks of the Oronoco, or of the still more dreadful Senegal, Gambia, and Niger, nowhere occur in Roman or Grecian history; so that these are problems towards the solution of which ancient history offers no assistance. [57] Gibbon. [58] Niebuhr. [59] Extremique hominum, Morini Rhenusque bicornis. _Æneid_ viii. [60] “Ab urbe condita;” from the building of the city (Rome), the era fixed on by the Romans. [61] This question was first agitated in the reign of Justinian, on the occasion of a proposal on his part to form a treaty with the negroes of Abyssinia. But the Abyssinians were not negroes.