The discipline and respect for authority which was acquired in the family life was carried with him by the Roman into his public relations, and this sense of duty was perhaps the strongest quality in the Roman character. It was supplemented by the characteristic Roman seriousness (_gravitas_), developed under the stress of the long struggles for existence waged by the early Roman state. In the Roman the highest virtue was piety (_pietas_), which meant the dutiful performance of all one’s obligations, to the gods, to one’s kinsmen, and to the state. The Romans were preëminently a practical people, and their practical virtues laid the foundation for their political greatness. *The mos maiorum.* We have already referred to the conservatism of the Romans, and have seen how this characteristic was affected by their religious beliefs. It was further strengthened by the respect paid to parental authority and by the absence of intellectual training. In public affairs this conservatism was shown by the influence of ancestral custom—the _mos maiorum_. In the Roman government this became a very potent factor, since the Roman constitution was not a single comprehensive document but consisted of a number of separate enactments supplemented by custom and precedent and interpreted in the light thereof. CHAPTER VIII ROMAN DOMINATION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN; THE FIRST PHASE—THE STRUGGLE WITH CARTHAGE; 265–201 B. C. I. THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN 265 B. C. *Rome a world power.* With the unification of the Italian peninsula Rome entered upon a new era in her foreign relations. She was now one of the great powers of the Mediterranean world and was inevitably drawn into the vortex of world politics. She could no longer rest indifferent to what went on beyond the confines of Italy. She assumed new responsibilities, opened up new diplomatic relations, developed a new outlook and new ambitions. At this time the other first-class powers were, in the east, the three Hellenistic monarchies—Egypt, Syria, and Macedon,—which had emerged from the ruins of the empire of Alexander the Great, and, in the west, the city state of Carthage.