And the Roman Empire played a part in the progress of the world, more immediately necessary than that of Hellas. The latter’s Empire of Spirit was in advance of its age. The world outside of the scattered outposts of Hellas was too rude, too backward in the very necessaries of life, to accept its message of beauty. Recognising this, the Hellenes called all other races and nations barbarians and held aloof from them. The Romans, on the contrary, absorbed the aliens, instilled into them the rudiments of their own civilisation, while taking advantage of any good trait in the people themselves, so that they helped them to rise out of themselves to a higher plane of living. In a lawless world they became the great exponents of order, the upbuilders and engineers of a system of organised society, and so firmly did they lay the foundations and so strongly did they build that, although subsequent hordes of barbarians overthrew the dominion of the empire of Rome and laid waste many of the visible signs of her building, the destroyers were gradually absorbed into her system and became its continuers. Therefore, when we consider the Romans specifically in relation to architecture, we look back to them as tireless and prodigious builders, constructors, and engineers, whose sense of beauty in architecture, as well as their aspirations in all branches of higher culture, were derived from the Hellenes. Their respect for the latter was such that so long as possible they tried to treat them as an independent power, with whom they could pursue the mutual advantages of commerce. Gradually, however, the tangle of politics made absorption necessary, and after a series of invasions Hellas herself became a province of the Roman Empire. War, in those days, as for centuries after, involved the barbarous practice of looting, and the Romans, with their shrewd instinct for acquiring what they most needed for their own development, bore back home in increasing quantity the treasures of architectural and sculptural art. Later, as the power of Hellas dwindled, Rome became the centre to which Hellenic artists and scholars flocked.