Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/82

 CHAPTER VI THE RISE OF ROME In the meantime, while Greece had lived through the great period of her intellectual and political splendour, another power , „ had been building itself up in the Italian penin- 1. Rome. ,, . , . . & ^ i. • sula, which in its turn was to dominate the civilised world. The recorded history of Rome and of Italy was the work of Roman writers at a comparatively late date, though their work was based on earlier records as well as traditions. The beginnings of the Italian states, however, were clearly later than the beginnings of Greek states, and the development was slower. But Rome presents us, as the Greeks did not, with the spectacle of a single state steadily and persis- tently extending its power and at the same time consolidating it. Among the Greeks the empire or supremacy which they called ' hegemony ' exercised by any one state never meant that the Contrast with other states were absorbed into it, or became one Greek System, with it. The leading state was obeyed willingly or unwillingly by the rest, which still remained separate states having no sense of unity with the chief. Such unity as there was always took the form of a loose confederacy, in which the strongest binding force, in the absence of any pressing emer- gency which threatened the whole group, was the power of a single state to compel obedience to its dictation. Rome, on the other hand, produced unity by the complete or partial admission of other states to its own citizenship ; by extending privileges to them, and by holding out the prospect of their becoming not allies or subordinates but actual members of the ruling state.