THE WAY PAVED FOR CHRISTIANITY. It was the great civilizing and unifying work of the Roman State that paved the way for the next great contribution to the foundations of the structure of our modern civilization--the contribution of Christianity. Had Italy never been consolidated; had the barbarian tribes to the north never been conquered and Romanized; had Spain and Africa and the eastern Mediterranean never known the rule of Rome; had the Latin language never become the speech of the then civilized peoples; had Roman armies never imposed law and order throughout an unruly world; had Roman governors and courts never established common rights and security; had Roman municipal government never come to be the common type in the cities of the provinces; had Roman schools in the provincial cities never trained the foreign citizen in Roman ways and to think Roman thoughts; had Rome never established free trade and intercourse throughout her Empire; had Rome never developed processes and skills in agriculture and the creative arts; had there been no Roman roads and common coinage; and had Rome not done dozens of other important things to unify and civilize Europe and reduce it to law and order, it is hard to imagine the chaos that would have resulted when the Empire gave way to the barbarian hordes which finally overwhelmed it. Where we should have been to-day in the upward march of civilization, without the work of Rome, it is impossible to say. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Contrast the Romans as a colonizing power with the modern Germans. The English. The French. 2. At what period in our national development did home education with us occupy substantially the same place as it did in Rome before 300 B.C.? In what respects was the education given boys and girls similar? Different? 3. What was the most marked advance over the Greeks in the early Roman training? 4. Contrast the education of the Athenian, Spartan, and Roman boy, during the early period in each State. 5. To what extent does early Roman education indicate the importance of the parent and of study of biography in the education of the young? 6. Was the change in character of the education of Roman youths, after the expansion of the Roman State and the establishment of world contacts, preventable, or was it a necessary evolution? Why? Have we ever experienced similar changes? 7. As a State increases in importance and enlarges its world contacts, is a correspondingly longer training and enlarged culture necessary at home? 8. What idea do you get as to the extent to which the Latinized Odyssey was read from the fact that the Latin language was crystallized in form shortly after the translation was made? 9. What does the rapid adoption of the Greek educational system, and the later evolution of a native educational system out of it, indicate as to the nature of Roman expansion? 10. Was the introduction of the Greek pedagogue as a fashionable adjunct natural? Why?