The Romans were men of action, not dreamers. They were more interested in doing things than in understanding them. They were men of strong will and cool mind, who looked out upon the world as they saw it and, for the most part, did not wonder much about how and why it came to be there. It was there for them to rule. That was what interested them. Ideas they mostly got from other people, especially from the Greeks. When they had got them they could use them and turn them to something of their own. But they were not distracted by puzzling over ideas. Their religion was that of a practical people. In the later days of Rome few educated men believed in the gods. But all the ceremonies and festivals were dedicated to them; and magnificent temples in their honour were erected in which their spirits were supposed to dwell. In the old days every Roman household had its particular images--the Lares and Penates which the head of the family tended and guarded. Connected with this office was the sacred authority of the head of the family--the paterfamilias. His word was law for the members of the household. And the City of Rome stood to its citizens in the place of the paterfamilias. The first laws of a Roman’s life were his duty to his father and to the State. They had an absolute claim on him for all that he could give. The Roman’s code of honour, like the Englishman’s, rested on this sense of duty. A man must be worthy of his ancestors and of Rome. His own life was short, and without honour nothing; the life of Rome went on. Courage, devotion to duty, strength of will, a great power of silence, a sense of justice rather than any sympathy in his dealings with other men: these were the characteristic Roman virtues. The Roman was proud: he had a high idea of what was due from himself. This was the groundwork out of which his other qualities grew, good and bad. Proud men are not apt to understand the weakness of other people or to appreciate virtues different from their own. The defects of the Romans were therefore hardness, sometimes amounting to cruelty both in action and in judgement; lack of imagination; a blindness to the things in life that cannot be seen or measured. They were just rather than generous. They trampled on the defeated and scorned what they could not understand. They worshipped success and cared little for human suffering. About this, however, they were honest. Sentimentalism was not a Roman vice, nor hypocrisy. When great wealth poured into the city, after the Eastern conquests of Lucullus and Pompeius, the simplicity of the old Roman life was destroyed and men began to care for nothing but luxury, show, and all the visible signs of power. They were quite open about it: they did not pretend that they really cared for other things, or talk about the ‘burden of Empire’.