Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/345

XI to be loyal. There was therefore little apparent hope that a great imperial State could be constituted on a solid and permanent basis, which might embrace and protect the innumerable City-States which it had absorbed. There was no principle of unity in this great dominion, — such unity as springs from the vigorous action of a strong central power, aided by responsible subordinates in the various parts, as well as by the healthy local action of the smaller centres of which it was composed.

There were other causes too at work which made it almost impossible for this vast dominion to progress successfully towards the realisation of true political unity. There was the startling difference between the peoples of the east and the peoples of the west; between the Greeks, including all who had felt the magic of Greek civilisation, and the inhabitants of Spain and Gaul, who had as yet developed no State, no law, no art, and no literature. There was the no less startling distinction between the status of the Roman citizen, whose life and property were everywhere sacred, and the status of the citizen of a subject community, which might look in vain to the Roman governor for protection. There was again, during the whole of the last century of the Republic, constant danger from the enemies of the Roman power on its frontiers; from powerful kings like Jugurtha, Mithridates, or Ariovistus, with whom the Senate could only cope by allowing ambitious generals to continue for years in command of large armies, thus straining the machinery of the City-State far beyond its