[Illustration: FIG. 18. THE GREAT EXTENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE The map shows the Roman Empire as it was by the end of the first century A.D., and the tribes shown beyond the frontier are as they were at the beginning of the fourth century A.D. It was 2500 miles, air line, from the eastern end of the Black Sea to the western coasts of Spain, 1400 miles from Rome to Palestine, and 1100 miles from Rome to northern Britain. To maintain order in this vast area Rome depended on the loyalty of her subjects, the strength of her armies, her military roads, and a messenger service by horse, yet throughout this vast area she imposed her law and a unified government for centuries.] THE GREAT MISSION OF ROME. Had Rome tried to impose her rule and her ways and her mode of thought on her subject people, and to reduce them to complete subjection to her, as the modern German and Austrian Empires, for example, tried to do with the peoples who came under their control, the Roman Empire could never have been created, and what would have saved civilization from complete destruction during the period of the barbarian invasions is hard to see. Instead, Rome treated her subjects as her friends, and not as conquered peoples; led them to see that their interests were identical with hers; gave them large local independence and freedom in government, under her strong control of general affairs; opened up her citizenship [4] and the line of promotion in the State to her provincials; [5] and won them to the peace and good order which she everywhere imposed by the advantages she offered through a common language, common law, common coinage, common commercial arrangements, common state service, and the common treatment of all citizens of every race. [6] In consequence, the provincial was willingly absorbed into the common Roman race [7]--absorbed in dress, manners, religion, political and legal institutions, family names, and, most important of all, in language. As a result, race pride and the native tongues very largely disappeared, and Latin became the spoken language of all except the lower classes throughout the whole of the Western Empire. Only in the eastern Mediterranean, where the Hellenic tongue and the Hellenic civilization still dominated, did the Latin language make but little headway, and here Rome had the good sense not to try to impose her speech or her culture. Instead she absorbed the culture of the East, while the East accepted in return the Roman government and Roman law, and Latin in time became the language of the courts and of government. Having stated thus briefly the most prominent characteristics of the Roman people, and indicated their great work for civilization, let us turn back and trace the development of such educational system as existed among them, see in what it consisted, how it modified the life and habits of thinking of the Roman people, and what educational organization or traditions Rome passed on to western civilization.