quoting Horace in the moonlight, naively unaware that only the
verse of the Greeks could pleasure the Roman ear.

The principalities and kingdoms that of their own wish [a wish
often suggested, and not always amicably either] became allies of
Rome and mingled their freedom with hers, entered into an alliance
whereby in return for Rome's patronage and protection they agreed
to have a proper regard for the dignity of the Roman people and to
have no other friends or enemies than those that were Rome's--a
formula exquisite in the civility with which it exacted the
renunciation of every inherent right. A king wrote to the senate:
"I have obeyed your deputy as I would have obeyed a god." "And you
have done wisely," the senate answered, a reply which, in its
terseness, tells all.

Diplomacy and the plow, such were Rome's methods. As for herself
she fought, she did not till. Italy, devastated by the civil wars,
was uncultivated, cut up into vast unproductive estates. From one
end to the other there was barely a trace of agriculture, not a
sign of traffic. You met soldiers, cooks, petty tradesmen,
gladiators, philosophers, patricians, market gardeners, lazzaroni
and millionaires; the merchant and the farmer, never. Rome's
resources were in distant commercial centres, in taxes and
tribute; her wealth had come of pillage and exaction. Save her
strength, she had nothing of her own. Her religion, literature,
art, philosophy, luxury and corruption, everything had come from
abroad. In Greece were her artists; in Africa, Gaul and Spain, her
agriculturists; in Asia her artisans. Her own breasts were
sterile. When she gave birth it was to a litter of monsters,
sometimes to a genius, by accident to a poet. She consumed, she