informative. Under the Empire Rome worked as a master, no longer as an
apprentice or a journeyman. The theatre of her civilizing activities was
here little less than the whole world then known, and the boast is not
unjustified that she made into a city what had formerly been but a
world, as we might say, merely a geographical expression. The record of
that progress reads to us too much as a narrative of incessant warfare,
and we are accustomed to think of her empire as a gigantic military
power, but in reality it was in aim and result essentially pacific, and
so appeared to those who lived under her sway. To them the name of her
empire was the 'Roman peace'. It was as such that the memory of it
haunted the minds of men when it too broke down from internal economic
disorders and external pressure, and a distracted and divided Europe
looked back to it as the pattern for a restored civilization.

The aim and result of the Roman Empire was peace, a world-wide peace.
It is true that this end was not very articulately defined by those who
pursued it, but (perhaps just because of that) the means to it were more
practically designed and more effectively executed. The civilized world
was one and to be treated as one; it was still Rome under a single
government and a single head. There arose then the idea of a supreme
sovereignty one and indivisible, that was the absolutely indispensable
condition of a world peace. But the necessity of organization was
equally grasped, insisted upon, realized. The civilized world was
covered with a network of institutions through which the will of the
Emperor flowed and circulated throughout the Empire. Peace through
system and order--that was the secret of the Roman success. But two
other ideas must be added to complete the explanation. The one was the
idea or ideal of Justice; no system and no order could work unless it
was, and commended itself to its subjects as being, scrupulously and
exactly just. The second idea was that in order to be this it must be a