land of Epeiros, nay too in after days beyond the sea, among worthy imitators of Hellenic models, in that land of Lykia whose people, in the latest day as in the earliest, stand forth as the worthiest folk of Asia, alongside of the men of Achaia, worthiest folk of Europe. Achaia, Rhodes, Pergamon; it was no mean lesson to be able to study the federal commonwealth, the single city commonwealth, the kingship of a house worthy to reign, each standing forth in a model example of those three several forms of government. In such a system of states as this, instead of the simpler relations of earlier days, we come across all the complications of modern international politics. While the old republican life goes on, we see beside it the working of dynastic interests, the influence of queens and ministers, exactly as in the modern world. Diplomacy has its work to do, and a busy and constant work it is. Nor is the history of these times simply the history of petty states. Not only Macedonia and Egypt, but Pergamon, Achaia, Rhodes, were all great powers according to the standard of any earlier age. They were the leading states of their own world, the chief members of an established system in which each held its place exactly like the states of the modern world. Suddenly a foreign power broke in among them, a power far stronger than any of them, a power which came from another world beyond their range, and which in a moment changed the face of the world into which it entered. The suddenness of this irruption of Rome into the Greek world, the speed with which she sprang at once to the first place in the East as well as in the West, are among the most striking parts of the story. They stand out in marked contrast alike to the slow steps by which Rome had marched to the headship of the West and to the slow steps by which her leadership in the East was changed into direct and universal rule. Next to the delusion that the Empire of Rome came to an end in 476 A.D. stands the delusion that free Greek states came to an end in 146 B.C. This last delusion may be easier to get rid of than the other. The third and second centuries B.C. have at least the advantage of being left pretty clear from the touch of the crammer. It is easier to write on white paper than to make parchment ready for a palimpsest. It may be easier to set forth the true aspect of the age which ruled that Rome should be the head of the world than it is to set forth the true aspect of the age which answers to it, the age which ruled in what shape Rome should still remain the head of the world, though her political dominion over half her provinces was broken in pieces. LECTURE II. ROME THE HEAD OF EUROPE.