Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/26

2 separate the histories of these two peoples. Or rather, even where they are studied at the same time, little effort is made to look at them as one great whole. Here, again, want of time to master the necessary detail is the cause, and the legitimate excuse. Yet so close is the connection between these two civilisations, that they may be in some respects considered as one and the same; and at the outset of a detailed study of either, it is as well to see whether they cannot be brought together in some way which will make it impossible for an intelligent learner ever to think of them again as wholly distinct.

Let us consider for a moment the nature of this close relation between Greek and Roman civilisation. It is indeed no great matter that the two races were not far distant from each other in ethnological descent. They were perhaps not so near of kin as we once thought, and it seems to be now made probable that the Romans were more closely allied to the Celtic race than they were to the Greek. But they were at least near enough to each other to feel a certain mutual attraction even early in their history. There is no trace of any such repulsion between them, as Greek and Phœnician seem always to have felt for each other, in spite of constant intercourse; their languages were both really and obviously related, while the Semitic speech of the Phœnician and Carthaginian was a sealed book to both. The veneration shown in the earliest Roman traditions for the superior gifts of the Hellenic race finds its counterpart in the