The work of Rome was political, governmental, and legal--not artistic or intellectual. Rome was strong where Greece was weak, and weak where Greece was strong. As a result the two peoples supplemented one another well in laying the foundations for our western civilization. The conquests of Greece were intellectual; those of Rome legal and governmental. Rome absorbed and amalgamated the whole ancient world into one Empire, to which she gave a common language, dress, manners, religion, literature, and political and legal institutions. Adopting Greek learning and educational practices as her own, she spread them throughout the then-known world. By her political organization she so fixed Roman ideas as to law and government throughout the Empire that Christianity built firmly on the Roman foundations, and the German barbarians, who later swept over the Empire, could neither destroy nor obliterate them. The Roman conquest of the world thus decisively influenced the whole course of western history, spread and perpetuated Greek ideas, and ultimately saved the world from a great disaster. To Rome, then, we are indebted most of all for ideas as to government, and for the introduction of law and order into an unruly world. In all the intervening centuries between ancient Rome and ourselves, and in spite of many wars and repeated onslaughts of barbarism, Roman governmental law still influences and guides our conduct, and this influence is even yet extending to other lands and other peoples. We are also indebted to Rome for many practical skills and for important engineering knowledge, which was saved and passed on to Western Europe through the medium of the monks. On the other side of the picture, the recent great World War, with all its awful destruction of life and property, and injury to the orderly progress of civilization, may be traced directly to the Roman idea of world empire and the sway of one imperial government, imposing its rule and its culture on the rest of mankind.