nean, swelled the opulence of its merchants. The age of Pericles had its price. The Carthaginian empire, embracing in its conquered area Northern Africa, Southern Spain, Corsica, Sardinia and half of Sicily, was first and foremost a trading state dominated by the idea of gathering from its subject provinces every particle of wealth that could be wrested from them by arms or squeezed out of them by monopoly.
Before the sword of Rome rich Carthage fell. When the two powers came face to face on the soil of Sicily, it was the hope of gain as well as fear of death that carried the vote for war in the Roman assembly. For this we have the authority of Polybius: "The military men told the people that they would get important material benefits from it." In this simple flash is revealed the powerful passion that drove the armies of the Republic beyond the borders of Italy and at length in many centuries of almost ceaseless aggression extended the empire of Rome to the sands of Arabia and to the snows of Scotland. Perhaps, as that modern pro-consul, Lord Curzon, has said by way of justification, the dominant motive was a search for "defensible frontiers"—something not yet found by any military commander anywhere on the globe. Still the noble lord had to confess in the same breath that Rome, having conquered a world, regarded her provinces "solely from the point of view of revenue." Varus, who was sent out a poor man to govern Syria, amassed a million in two years.
When Rome had grasped more than she could defend, her fair cities and fertile fields became spoils of victory for the German barbarians that had long beaten against her borders. For two hundred years at least the civilization of the Mediterranean world was at the mercy of migratory Teutons. Finally there were no more Roman provinces to seize; then feudal war lords employed their acquisitive talents for the next thousand years in fighting one another over manors and towns, pausing occasionally to unite against the Moslem, who threatened them
