Page:The municipalites of the Roman empire (IA municipalitesofr00reidrich).pdf/19



subject which I have to introduce is, to state it briefly, that of the city as the chief, or it would be nearer the truth to say, the sole ultimate constituent element in the structure of the ancient Roman empire. There would be little exaggeration in asserting that the town stands to that empire in a relation like that of the cell to the tissues in a living body. We are familiar with the fact that the vast organisation to which we give the name of the Roman empire had for its source a petty town which, in dim prehistoric time, arose on a few isolated hills of the Campagna, close to the yellow Tiber's stream. In the whole of history there has been no development so stupendous, so majestic, or so orderly, as that by which this little civic community was enabled not merely to bring within the circle of its power all the centres of ancient civilisation, from Babylon to Carthage, from Memphis to Marseille, but also to lure from barbarism many peoples on whom hardly a breath of culture either from Hellas or from the Orient had ever breathed. Scholars by profession know well, but students less advanced often fail to realise, that through this marvellous evolution there runs a continuous thread of history which is rather municipal than imperial. Until we catch the clue and follow it through the ages of Rome's rise and fall, there is much in Roman history which will be misconceived, and we shall fail to envisage clearly the policy by which the supremacy of Rome was won, the manner in which it was used when R. R. E.