Surrounded by warlike neighbours, Rome must either triumph or cease to exist; hence her superiority in the art of war, for, as Montesquieu says, in transient wars most of the examples are lost; peace brings other ideas, and its faults and even its virtues are forgotten; hence that contempt of treason and that disdain for the advantages it promises: Camillus sends home to their parents the children of the first families of Falerii, delivered up to him by their schoolmaster; the Senate rejects with indignation the offer of the physician of Pyrrhus, who proposes to poison that prince;--hence that religious observance of oaths and that respect for engagements which have been contracted: the Roman prisoners to whom Pyrrhus had given permission to repair to Rome for the festival of Saturn, all return to him faithful to their word; and Regulus leaves the most memorable example of faithfulness to his oath!--hence that skilful and inflexible policy which refuses peace after a defeat, or a treaty with the enemy so long as he is on the soil of their country; which makes use of war to divert people from domestic troubles;[240] gains the vanquished by benefits if they submit, and admits them by degrees into the great Roman family; and, if they resist, strikes them without pity and reduces them to slavery;[241]--hence that anxious provision for multiplying upon the conquered territories the race of agriculturists and soldiers;--hence, lastly, the improving spectacle of a town which becomes a people, and of a people which embraces the world.
PROSPERITY OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE THE PUNIC WARS.
[Sidenote: Commerce of the Mediterranean.]
I. Rome had required two hundred and forty-four years to form her constitution under the kings, a hundred and seventy-two to establish and consolidate the consular Republic, seventy-two to complete the conquest of Italy, and now it will cost her nearly a century and a half to obtain the domination of the world--that is, of Northern Africa, Spain, the south of Gaul, Illyria, Epirus, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Before undertaking the recital of these conquests, let us halt an instant to consider the condition of the basin of the Mediterranean at this period, of that sea round which were successively unfolded all the great dramas of ancient history. In this examination we shall see, not without a feeling of regret, vast countries where formerly produce, monuments, riches, numerous armies and fleets--all, indeed, revealed an advanced state of civilisation--now deserts or in a state of barbarism.