Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/369

 The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christianity 3 1 1 world, was conquered by the civilization of that Orient which she despised. Her ruler became an oriental sultan ; his methods of government and administration were orientalized ; oriental religion and methods of thought were supreme ; and at Con- stantinople life and art were also oriental. By Rome oriental monarchy was introduced into Europe, where it later so pro- foundly affected the history of our ancestors, and in the Roman Empire free citizenship perished. Thus the final organization of Rome (in spite of the Republic out of which it grew) has proved one of the great links between the world to which we belong and the despotism of the early Orient behind Rome. One leading element in the organization of Rome always The greatest remained her own, and this was law. In Ro man law, still a Rome power in modern government, we have the great creation of Roman genius, which has more profoundly affected th e later world than any otherRoman J^ns^titutLon. Another great office of Rome was the^iversal spread of that international civili- zation which had been brought forth by Greece in contact with the Orient. She gave to that civilization the far-reach- ing organization which under the Greeks it had lacked. That organization, though completely transformed into oriental des- potism, endured for five centuries and withstood the tide of barbarian invasion from the grasslands of the north (p. 86), which would otherwise have overwhelmed the disorganized Greek world long before. Herein lies much of the significance of Rome. The Roman State was the last bulwark of civilization intrenched on the Mediterranean against the Indo-European hordes pouring in from those same northern pastures, where the ancestors of Greek and Roman alike had once fed their flocks. But the bulwark, though shaken, did not fall because of hostile assaults from without. It fell because of decay within, and because it could not keep itself impervious to the tide of life from the East. After the foundation of Constantinople the Roman Empire for a time remained one in law, government, and culture. Even