language or the Roman civilization.

[Footnote 1: Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_, p. 147; Kubitschek,
_Festheft Bormann_ (Wiener Studien, xx. 2), pp. 340 foll.; L. Hahn, _Rom
und Romanismus im griechisch-röm. Osten_ (Leipzig, 1906).]

The west offers a different spectacle. Here Rome found races that were
not yet civilized, yet were racially capable of accepting her culture.
Here, accordingly, her conquests differed from the two forms of conquest
with which modern men are most familiar. We know well enough the rule of
civilized white men over uncivilized Africans, who seem sundered for
ever from their conquerors by a broad physical distinction. We know,
too, the rule of civilized white men over civilized white men--of
Russian (for example) over Pole, where the individualities of two
kindred and similarly civilized races clash in undying conflict. The
Roman conquest of western Europe resembled neither of these. Celt,
Iberian, German, Illyrian, were marked off from Italian by no broad
distinction of race and colour, such as that which marked off Egyptian
from Italian, or that which now divides Englishman from African or
Frenchman from Algerian Arab. They were marked off, further, by no
ancient culture, such as that which had existed for centuries round the
Aegean. It was possible, it was easy, to Romanize these western peoples.

Even their geographical position helped, though somewhat indirectly, to
further the process. Tacitus two or three times observes that the
western provinces of the Empire looked out on no other land to the
westward and bordered on no free nations. That is one half of a larger
fact which influenced the whole history of the Empire. Round the west
lay the sea and the Sahara. In the east were wide lands and powerful
states and military dangers and political problems and commercial