448 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

—aimed at and achieved. Though his language (Latin)
occupies to this day a classical seat by the side of Greek,
and though the Romance languages (Italian, Portuguese,
Spanish, and French) bear witness to its widespread influence,
the particular legacy of Rome to the modern World was her
"unparalleled system of law and justice." As Professor
Heamshaw has summarised : * She established a world
peace; she linked her vast dominions together by a network
of splendid roads; she maintained an unparalleled system
of law and justice; she developed an extensive commerce;
she erected in all her provinces magnificent public works;
she preserved the culture of the Hellenic East; she educated

the barbarians of the Celtic West;-----fused barbarians and

Greeks into a single polity ; brought East and West together,
and impressed upon the civilised world a consciousness of
unity which even to the present day has never been whoUy
lost' Rome, in short, tried to do for the Ancient World
what Britain has attempted to do in the modern. The tradi-
tion of the Roman Empire has been always a living force
in Europe. ' Alike in literature, in art, in philosophy, and
in religion/ Asquith has observed, 'Rome built the bridge
over which many of the best thoughts and finest models
of antiquity found their way into the Medieval and thence
into the Modem World.' The fascist idealism of Mussolini's
Italy is the latest product of the Roman inspiration.

When the Roman Empire was deluged by the barbarian
hordes, of Attila the Hun and Alaric the Goth, Rome be-
queathed to Europe Constantinople and Christianity. The
former proved to be the Eastern bulwark of European civi-
lisation and the latter remained the only civilising force
in the midst of an all-devouring paganism-; though ultimate-
ly, Constantinople succumbed to the Turks and Christian
Europe was Swallowed by the new paganism of modem times,