Under him the Germans became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome and Rome's authority. While the political connection with Italy stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture hitherto unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object. Germany became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Empire of the West had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer and more lasting, since based on a social force which the other had wanted. It perpetuated the name, the language, the literature, such as it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to represent that concentration for which men cried, and became a power to unite and civilize Europe. [Sidenote: Otto II, A.D. 973-983.] [Sidenote: Otto III, A.D. 983-1002.] [Sidenote: His ideas. Fascination exercised over him by the name of Rome.] [Sidenote: Pope Sylvester II, A.D. 1000.] The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment, as the era of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding rulers may be more quickly dismissed. Yet Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad, full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert: through the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the venerable rights of Constantinople? It was his design, now that the solemn millennial era of the founding of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire, victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's, holy as Constantine's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was: Germany rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In A.D. 994, at the age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and quell the turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in whom modern enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes entitling himself Emperor[164]. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert, whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of