Although his masterwork was entitled _History of Rome_, he explained, in the Introductory Chapter, that he intended “to relate the history of Italy, not simply the record of the city of Rome.” While the Romans represented the most powerful branch of the Italian stock, yet they were only a branch--but this civic community of Rome gained sovereignty over Italy and the world of its day. Like the historian Freeman, Mommsen insisted upon “the unity of history,” the similarity of human nature from 1800 B. C. to modern times. Few writers have surpassed him in revivifying historical characters. He had strong likes and dislikes, prejudices which he could impress upon the reader, although he was generally justified in his statements and balanced in his estimates. The portrait of Cicero, which “was bitten with vitriolic energy,” as Mr. Buchan has said, in _Some Eighteenth Century Byways and Other Essays_, has been most widely quoted; it is less impartial than his characterizations of Hannibal, Sully, and Cæsar. By temperament and political bias, Mommsen was an admirer of Julius Cæsar; he has given to him a living portraiture. The pictorial Chapter IV in Book III, descriptive of Hannibal’s Passage of the Alps, is a world-famous extract from this _History of Rome_. In the same chapter is the analysis of Hannibal’s character, so often quoted: “He was primarily marked by that inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the Phœnician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes: ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him; he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care.... The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various natives and many tongues.... He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.”[26]