Footnote 30: German gymnastics, from the intensely provincial and natural forms imparted to it by Jahn, has since 1813 been carried by a very rapid development into the sport category. The difference between a Berlin athletic ground on a big day and a Roman circus was even by 1914 very slight. ----- XIII Considered in itself, the Roman world-dominion was a negative phenomenon, being the result not of a surplus of energy on the one side— that the Romans had never had since Zama—but of a deficiency of resistance on the other. That the Romans did _not_ conquer the world is certain;[31] they merely took possession of a booty that lay open to everyone. The _Imperium Romanum_ came into existence not as the result of such an extremity of military and financial effort as had characterized the Punic Wars, but because the old East forwent all external self-determinations. We must not be deluded by the appearance of brilliant military successes. With a few ill-trained, ill-led, and sullen legions, Lucullus and Pompey conquered whole realms—a phenomenon that in the period of the battle of Ipsus would have been unthinkable. The Mithradatic danger, serious enough for a system of material force which had never been put to any real test, would have been nothing to the conquerors of Hannibal. After Zama, the Romans never again either waged or were capable of waging a war against a great military Power.[32] Their classic wars were those against the Samnites, Pyrrhus and Carthage. Their grand hour was Cannæ. To maintain the heroic posture for centuries on end is beyond the power of any people. The Prussian- German people have had three great moments (1813, 1870 and 1914), and that is more than others have had.