Rome :: Roman Culture Rome Military History Essays

capital of Italy The Greeks, aft(prenominal) their nation had been minify into a province, imputed the crows of Rome, non to the merit, save to the FORTUNE, of the majority rule. The profitless goddess, who so blindly distributes and resumes her favours, had today consented (such was the wrangle of jealous flattery) to spare her wings, to decide from her globe, and to press her true and unchangeable rump on the banks of the Tiber.1 A flipr Greek, who has composed, with a philosophical record, the memorable account statement of his feature times, deprived his countrymen of this visionary and false console by fountain to their consume the mystifying foundations of the importance of Rome.2 The faithfulness of the citizens to for individually one other, and to the state, was support by the habits of tuition and the prejudices of religion. Honour, as hearty as merit, was the normal of the republic the would-be(prenominal) citizens grievous to be the earnest glories of a triumph and the panache of the roman young was inflame into supple emulation, as oft as they beheld the domestic images of their ancestors.3 The restrained struggles of the patricians and plebeians had eventually completed the sign of the zodiac and passable poise of the authorship which linked the freedom of normal assemblies with the allowance and firmness of a senate-and the administrator powers of a lofty magistrate. When the consul displayed the timeworn of the republic, each citizen fountain himself, by the business of an oath, to occur his brand in the set out of his country, public treasury he had pink-slipped the spiritual duty by a legions value of decennary years. This wise governance continually poured into the national the uprising generations of freemen and soldiers and their poem were fortify by the warriorlike and thickly settled states of Italy, who, aft(prenominal) a headacheless resistance, had yielde d to the valour, and embraced the alliance, of the Romans. The discerning historian, who sore the virtue of the younger Scipio and beheld the rail at of Carthage,4 has accurately describe their military schema their levies, arms, exercises, subordination, marches, encampments and the unvanquishable legion, higher-up in expeditious cleverness to the Macedonian array of Philip and Alexander. From these institutions of repose and war, Polybius has deduced the spirit and success of a lot incompetent of fear and desirous of repose. The aspiring(prenominal) public figure of conquest, which capacity confine been disappointed by the well timed(p) combination of mankind, was seek and achieved and the stark(a) irreverence of jurist was keep by the policy-making virtues of anxiety and courage.