Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/110

 on the one hand and the Etruscan encroachments on the other, — is of the greater importance in the development of the general scheme of history.

Rome, as it began to appear to the more recent French historians, was no more a conqueror. It sought not world domination: it was called to this destiny because of the impossibility of peace by any other solution. It accomplished as a city what Alexander compassed as a hero, what the half-Greek Hannibal strove to achieve. The Romans, at no time and in place, attempted to change the life of the aboriginal peoples over whom they assumed the mastery. They merely supervised the progress of their conquests, each of which became a Roman province, while preserving its ancient traditions.

Christianity appeared as a new power, as a menace to imperial supremacy. In its modified form, very different from its initial Palestinian pastoral form, it gave to the world, accustomed to live under a single government, its instinctive unity. This has been the greatest achievement of the religion of love tending, in its perfected organisation, to become the best means of dominating all nations.

The middle ages began with the moment that the first barbarian state, that of the Franks, adopted Christianity and served Christian ends. So the invasion of the Germans and Turanians too loses much of its recognised importance. They are no longer the founders of a new era, bringing with them, against tyranny and dissolution, their patriarchal and personal dependency, their liberty and purity of morals. No enemies and, still less, despisers of Rome, they served, revered and would have liked to resemble her. The theory of the catastrophe which heralded the mediaeval epoch has been attacked in more recent days by an Austrian, Herr Dopsch. The ancient times continued