[22] 'The best raw material.' Some people hold that the Romans and Italians were a cowardly nation. We doubt this on the whole. Physically, however, they were inferior to their neighbours. It is certain that the Transalpine Gauls were a conspicuously taller race. Caesar says: 'Gallis, prae magnitudine corporum quorum, brevitas nostra contemptui est' ('Bell. Gall.' 2, 30 _fin_.); and the Germans, in a still higher degree, were both larger men and every way more powerful. The kites, says Juvenal, had never feasted on carcases so huge as those of the Cimbri and Teutones. But this physical superiority, though great for special purposes, was not such absolutely. For the more general uses of the legionary soldier, for marching, for castrametation, and the daily labours of the spade or mattock, a lighter build was better. As to single combats, it was one effect from the Roman (as from every good) discipline--that it diminished the openings for such showy but perilous modes of contest. [23] '_Any considerable portion of this provincial corn growth,' i.e._, of the provincial culture which was pursued on account of Rome, meaning not the government of Rome, but, in a rigorous sense, on account of Rome the city. For here lies a great oversight of historians and economists. Because Rome, with a view to her own _privileged_ population, _i.e._, the urban population of Rome, the metropolis, in order that she might support her public distributions of grain, almost of necessity depended on foreign supplies, _we are not to suppose that the great mass of Italian towns and municipia did so_. Maritime towns, having the benefit of ports or of convenient access, undoubtedly were participators in the Roman advantage. But inland towns would in those days have forfeited the whole difference between foreign and domestic grain by the enormous cost of inland carriage. Of canals there was but one; the rivers were not generally navigable, and ports as well as river shipping were wanting. [24] '_Heraclius._' The same prosodial fault affects this name as that of _Alexandria_. In each name the Latin _i_ represents a Greek _ei_, and in that situation (viz., as a penultimate syllable) should receive the emphasis in pronunciation as well as the sound of a long _i_ (that sound which is heard in Long_i_nus). So again Academ_i_a, not Acad_e_mia. The Greek accentuation may be doubted, but not the Roman.