her empire grew, in the main, like the British, upon a subconscious impulse to expand.  She conquered Italy because she was strong; much stronger inwardly in spirit than outwardly in arms; and because (I do but repeat what Mr. Stobart says:  the whole picture really is his) what should she do with her summer holidays, unless go on a campaign?—­and because while she had still citizens without land to hoe cabbages in, she must look about and provide them with that prime necessity.  All of which amounts to saying that she began with a habit of empire-winning,—­which must have been created in the past.  On her toughness the spirited Gaul broke as a wave, and fell away.  On her narrow unmagnanimity the chivalrous mountain Samnite bore down, and like foam vanished.  She had none of the spiritual possibilities of the Gaul; but the Crest-Wave was coming, and the future was with Italy.  She had none of the high-souled chivalry of the Samnite; but she was the heart of Italy, and the point from which Italy must expand.  She was hard, tough, and based on the soil; and that soil, as it happened, the laya center,—­a sort of fire-fountain from within and the unseen.  You stood on the Seven Hills, and let heaven and hell conspire together, you could not be defeated.  Gauls, Samnites, Latins,—­all that ever attacked her,—­were but taking a house-cloth to dry up a running spring.  The Crest-Wave was coming to Italy; whose vital forces, all centrifugal before, must now be made to turn and flow towards the center.  That was Rome; and as they would not flow to her of their own good will, out she must go and gather them in.  Long afterwards, when the Caesars and Augusti of the West left her for Milan and Ravenna, it was because the Crest-Wave was departing, the forces turning centrifugal, and Italy breaking to pieces; long afterwards again, in the eighteen-seventies, when the Crest-Wave was returning, Italy must flow in centripetally to Rome; no Turin, no Florence would do.

So, by 264 B.C., she had conquered Italy.  Then, still land-hungry, she stepped over into Sicily, invited by certain rascals in Messana, and light-heartedly challenged the Mistress of the Western Seas.  At this point the stream is leaving Balbus’s fields and Ahenobarbus’s cattle, and coming to the broad waters, where the ships of the world ride in.

XVII.  ROME PARVENUE *

The Punic War was not forced on Rome.  She had no good motive for it; not even a decent excuse.  It was simply that she was accustomed to do the next thing; and Carthage presented itself as the next thing to fight,—­Sicily, the next thing to be conquered.  The war lasted from 264 to 241; and at the end of it Rome found herself out of Italy; mistress of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.  The Italian laya center had expanded; Italy had boiled over.  It was just the time when Ts’in at the other end of the world was conquering China, and the Far Eastern Manvantara was beginning.  Manvantaras do not begin or end anywhere, I imagine, without some cyclic event marking it in all other parts of the world.