The History of Rome, Book V: The Establishment of the Military MonarchyMommsen, Theodor
History
The History of Rome, Book V: The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
Mommsen, Theodor
Rome -- History
a new province for the Romans, but had laid the foundation
for the Romanizing of the regions of the west. It was only a late
posterity that perceived the meaning of those expeditions
to England and Germany, so inconsiderate in a military point of view,
and so barren of immediate result. An immense circle of peoples,
whose existence and condition hitherto were known barely through
the reports--mingling some truth with much fiction--of the mariner
and the trader, was disclosed by this means to the Greek and Roman
world. "Daily," it is said in a Roman writing of May 698,
"the letters and messages from Gaul are announcing names of peoples,
cantons, and regions hitherto unknown to us." This enlargement
of the historical horizon by the expeditions of Caesar beyond
the Alps was as significant an event in the world's history
as the exploring of America by European bands. To the narrow circle
of the Mediterranean states were added the peoples of central
and northern Europe, the dwellers on the Baltic and North seas;
to the old world was added a new one, which thenceforth was influenced
by the old and influenced it in turn. What the Gothic Theodoric
afterwards succeeded in, came very near to being already carried
out by Ariovistus. Had it so happened, our civilization would have
hardly stood in any more intimate relation to the Romano-Greek than
to the Indian and Assyrian culture. That there is a bridge connecting
the past glory of Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern
history; that Western Europe is Romanic, and Germanic Europe
classic; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have to us
a very different sound from those of Asoka and Salmanassar;
that Homer and Sophocles are not merely like the Vedas and Kalidasa
attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own
garden--all this is the work of Caesar; and, while the creation
of his great predecessor in the east has been almost wholly reduced
to ruin by the tempests of the Middle Ages, the structure of Caesar
has outlasted those thousands of years which have changed religion
and polity for the human race and even shifted for it the centre
of civilization itself, and it stands erect for what we may
designate as eternity.
The Countries on the Danube
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