Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/348

324 wherever he might be in the Empire, was a centre of government far more effectual than the City-Senate of the last few generations. This extraordinary man did not live to organise the new State-unity which his military genius had forced upon the world. There is indeed sufficient proof that he was ready as well as able to put his hand to that work. But assassination put an end to his endeavours, and his death was followed by a new period of confusion.

Then at last upon his foundation the mighty fabric began slowly to arise. In its first form it was almost complete at the close of the long life of Augustus. That skilful architect, with the true Roman instinct to pull down nothing that had once been erected, and with the just feeling that the Senate of the Republic could not be degraded or rudely set aside, perceived that the ruins of the great City-State of Rome might be embodied in the new structure. Later on, as men's eyes grew accustomed to the fabric that was being reared, the old fragments became more and more obscured, though they were never entirely hidden; and by the second century A.D. it may be said that the Roman Empire was an entirely new form of State, such as the world had never yet seen, and had hardly as yet hoped for.

It was not unlike that which had presented itself to the mind of Alexander, for the intellectual forces