peg on which hostile critics, such as Mr. Mallik, whose work was reviewed last week in these columns,[99] as also those ultra-cosmopolitan Englishmen who are the friends of every country but their own, may hang partisan homilies dwelling on the brutality of conquest and on all the harsh features of alien rule, whilst they leave sedulously in the background that aspect of the case which Polybius, parodying a famous saying of Themistocles, embodied in a phrase which he attributes to the Greeks after they had been absorbed into the Roman Empire, “If we had not been quickly ruined, we should not have been saved.”  This pessimistic aspect of Imperialism has certainly to some extent an historical basis.  It is founded on the procedure generally believed to have been adopted in the process by which Rome acquired the dominion of the world.  The careful attention given of late years to the study of inscriptions, and generally the results obtained by the co-operation established between historians and those who have more especially studied other branches of science, such as archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics, have, however, now enabled us to approach the question of Roman expansion with far greater advantages than those possessed by writers even so late as the days of Mommsen.  We are able to reply with a greater degree of confidence than at any previous period to the question of how far Roman policy was really associated with those principles and practices which many are accustomed to designate as Imperial.  The valuable and erudite work which Mr. Reid has now given to the world comes opportunely to remind us of a very obvious and commonplace consideration.  It is that although Roman expansion not only began, but was far advanced during the days of the Republic, Roman Imperialism did not exist before the creation of Roman Emperors, and did not in any considerable degree develop the vices generally, and sometimes rightly, attributed to the system until some while after Republican had given way to Imperial sway.  “The residuary impression of the ancient world,” Mr. Reid says in his preface, “left by a classical education comprises commonly the idea that the Romans ran, so to speak, a sort of political steam-roller over the ancient world.  This has a semblance of truth for the period of decline, but none for the earlier days.”

The fundamental idea which ran through the whole of Roman policy during the earliest, which was also the wisest and most statesmanlike stage of expansion, was not any desire to ensure the detailed and direct government of a number of outlying districts from one all-powerful centre, but rather to adopt every possible means calculated to maintain local autonomy, and to minimise the interference of the central authority.  Herself originally a city-state, Rome aspired to become the predominant partner in a federation of municipalities, to which autonomy was granted even to the extent of waiving that prerogative which has generally been