The Roman Empire
Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the
circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business. The
Roman Empire must have died of inexperience of some kind, I should
think most likely it was puzzled to death by the Christian religion.
But the question is not so much how the Roman Empire or any other
great thing came to an end--everything must come to an end some time,
it is only scientists who wonder that a state should die--the
interesting question is how did the Romans become so great, under
what circumstances were they born and bred? We should watch
childhood and schooldays rather than old age and death-beds.
As I sit writing on the top of a wild-beast pen of the amphitheatre
of Aosta I may note, for one thing, that the Romans were not
squeamish, they had no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals. Again, their ladies did not write in the newspapers. Fancy
Miss Cato reviewing Horace! They had no Frances Power Cobbes, no . .
. s, no . . . s; yet they seem to have got along quite nicely without
these powerful moral engines. The comeliest and most enjoyable races
that we know of were the ancient Greeks, the Italians and the South
Sea Islanders, and they have none of them been purists.
Italians and Englishmen
Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or
want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them
any harm.
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