But the true fruitage of a nation is found in the permanent works which it transmits to posterity, and judged by this standard Rome surely did not come to its prime until Greece was on the path of its decadence. It may be true that Rome banished her kings and came under republican sway almost as early as Athens; but the Greek city had had a far longer preparation and burst at once into its full bloom of civilisation, as evidenced in the “Age of Pericles,” whereas the Roman civilisation had still to pass through many generations of development before it began to produce those lasting records which mark the difference between tradition and history. Even so, however, the gap in time between the Grecian and the Roman periods was not very great--there were but three centuries between Alexander and Cæsar. And in the time of the later emperors the two civilisations were curiously merged in the East, where the whole aspect of the Roman court became Grecian, and the Greek language even became the official medium of communication throughout the remnants of the Roman Empire. Of these later phases of the development and decay of the Roman Empire, abundant and secure records are in evidence, as we shall see later on. Meantime, though the stories of the early or mythical period cannot be called history, in the narrower sense of the word, they were too long believed, and have too often been repeated to be suddenly ignored. They are no longer accepted as sober history, and yet the most sober historian dares not altogether discard them. As in the case of the Greek mythology, the happiest compromise seems to be that in which the more interesting tales are retained and repeated with the explicit qualification that they are to be accepted as legends only. This applies not merely to the stories of the foundation of Rome and of the earlier kings, but even, it must freely be admitted, to the hero tales of Horatius, the elder Brutus, Cincinnatus, Coriolanus, and the rest; though doubtless, as one comes down the years, the historical element makes itself more and more felt, and the legendary basis becomes less and less dominant. We have first to do, however, with a series of citations which, let it be said once for all, are purely legendary, and which each individual reader is quite at liberty to interpret as best suits his individual imagination.[a] THE ÆNEAS LEGEND