So it is in Macedonia; so it is in Sicily; so it is in the Greater Hellas on Italian soil. All these lands, and other lands beside, become, for a longer or shorter time, part of the immediate Greek world, no less than Attica or Peloponnêsos. Greek colonization and Macedonian conquest had, each in its turn, a share in the work, and both were in many lands not a little helped by real, if unconscious, kindred on the part of those whom colonists and conquerors found already in possession. Every colony, every conquest, not only won new lands for the Greek settlers themselves, but increased the Greek nation in its wider sense by multitudes who became Greek by adoption, and in whose case the work of adoption was made more easy by the existence of earlier ties of which neither side had thought. As time goes on, as we reach the days when Greek influences were most widely spread over the Mediterranean lands, we may easily trace out zones within zones, marking out the different stages by which the Greek element grows fainter and fainter. First there is the centre of all, the original Hellas itself. Then there are the genuine colonies of old Hellas, detached fragments of Hellenic soil translated to foreign coasts. Then there are the kindred lands whose people were fully adopted into the Hellenic fold. Beyond them again lie the kingdoms ruled by Macedonian princes, where a few great cities which we must call Greek by the law of adoption are planted in lands which have received at the outside only the faintest varnish of Hellenic culture. Lastly, beyond these again, there are the barbarian lands whose princes, like barbarian princes in our own day, made a show of adopting Greek speech and Greek culture, but where the foreign tastes of the princes had no real effect on their kingdoms, and which we cannot look on as forming part of the Greek world in the laxest sense. Such was Parthia; such was Pontos. Is it too much to add to the barbarian kingdoms of the East the mighty commonwealth of the West which had once been in Greek eyes no less barbarian? It is no small part of our œcumenical story to mark how far Rome became Greek and how far Rome refused to become Greek. The facts belong to a later time; yet in some sort they form part of our present survey. The Rome which brought the Greek lands step by step, first under Roman influence, then under Roman dominion, was a Rome which had already come within the magic circle of Hellenic teaching; while keeping the essential essence of the national life untouched, while remaining truly Roman in every political institution, in every detail of law and government, she became Greek for every purpose of refined and intellectual life. Nay, Rome became, like Macedonia, a disciple that gathered in fresh disciples. Wherever Rome’s political life spread, some measure, greater or less, of Greek intellectual life spread with it.