Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/356

332 of the Republic, it is not impossible that the world might have lost for ever all or most of what mankind had learnt in the age of the City-State. As it was, the Roman Empire of the Cæsars held the barbarians at bay long enough to inspire them with such reverence for its own greatness, that the rich legacy which it had inherited from its forefathers of the could not be entirely dissipated in the general confusion which followed its downfall.