In Asia his conquests, rather than his half-thought-out plans for racial amalgamation, were decisive of future political development. There was an expansion of Hellenic culture throughout the East, marked by the common use of the Greek language and by a general absorption of the special traits of Greek social usages and sympathies. The civilization, so wrought out and transplanted, lost the creativeness and the spontaneity of the small communities of continental Greece. The Hellenic spirit lost its potency, if we may so phrase it, and in the sphere of government especially exhibited disheartening symptoms of selfishness and greed. Economically, the opening up of Asia meant enlarged facilities for the commercial exploitation of a vast and rich territory. It ushered in a period of great industrial fortunes, it increased opportunities for communication both by land and sea, it established higher standards of comfort and taste among populations who had lived a crude, colorless, and isolated existence. On the basis of Alexander’s conquests a grandiose cosmopolitanism was built up in Asia which cast down tribal and racial boundaries and made it possible for masses of plain people to gain a livelihood under tolerable conditions. * * * * * CÆSAR I CÆSAR’S BEGINNINGS The progress of an imperial power is obscure even when the foundations of its greatness are associated with some great military leader or lawgiver, but when one has to give a reason why some one political community becomes the point of centripetal attraction, and gathers about it, either by fear or devotion, the support of large masses of mankind, the efforts of historical analysis are frustrated at almost every point. [Illustration: CÆSAR (Naples, Museum.)] The rise of the small town community on the Tiber, about whose name there centered for nearly two thousand years the dread and the reverence of the progressive nations of the world, is veiled in legend. Why did not Palestrina, or Cori, or one of the numerous Etruscan cities to the north, become the germ of a world-wide rule? Of course the answer of the economist is that just because Rome is situated on the Tiber, its position gave it possibilities of advancement denied to the ordinary hill towns of Italy. This explanation may be taken as sufficient only when one allows that the burghers of Rome set out to accomplish what they did, not only because they were traders, but because the imaginative and grandiose factors in commercial enterprise must have worked in a singularly sensitive and highly organized social medium.