Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/347

XI Republic the City-State may truly be said to have ceased to exist.

Yet it was found possible to build up out of the ruins left by the older civilisation a. new State of sufficient strength and unity to supply almost all the needs which in this melancholy age were most keenly felt. When the Roman Republic came to an end, leaving the whole dominion in conflict and disorder, what was most urgently needed was a great central unifying force, competent to protect against invasion from without, and against injustice and dissension from within; something to which to be loyal; something to constitute a clear visible impersonation of the majesty of the Roman government. Nor was this all. Within the State so constituted there was need for uniformly organised municipal life, in which the rights and duties of every man should be clearly laid down for him, even in the parts most distant from the centre. There was need, in short, for an order and a civilisation which, far from breaking wholly with the past, should be capable of retaining and handing on all the treasures which the City-State had accumulated, — treasures of government and legal knowledge, treasures of literature and art, of science and of philosophy.

For a few brief months before the assassination of the Dictator Cæsar an outward imperial unity was actually realised. There was a general peace, and an almost universal recognition of the pre-eminent power of a single determined ruler, who,