“No war or battle sound, Was heard the world around; The idle spear and shield were high uphung; The hooked chariot stood, Unstained with hostile blood, The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovran lord was by.” The efforts of the conquerors did not cease with the mere military subjugation of a country, but were extended far beyond the extinction of the hostile force. The Roman soldier was not a mere fighter, nor were his labors, out of the conflict, confined to the erection of military works only. The stern discipline, which made his arms triumphant in the day of battle, had also taught him cheerfully to exchange those triumphant arms for the tools of peaceful labor, that he might insure the solid permanency of his conquests, by the perfection of such works as would make tranquillity desirable to the conquered, and soothe them to repose under a dominion which so effectually secured their good. Roads, that have made Roman _ways_ proverbial, and which the perfection of modern art has never equaled in more than one or two instances, reached from the capital to the farthest bounds of the empire. Seas, long dangerous and almost impassable for the trader and enterprising voyager, were swept of every piratical vessel; and the most distant channels of the Aegean and Levant, where the corsair long ruled triumphant, both before and since, became as safe as the porches of the capitol. Regions, to which nature had furnished the indispensable gift of water, neither in abundance nor purity, were soon blessed with artificial rivers, flowing over mighty arches, that will crumble only with the pyramids. In the dry places of Africa and Asia, as well as in distant Gaul, mighty aqueducts and gushing fountains refreshed the feverish traveler, and gave reality to the poetical prophecy, that “In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.”