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Excerpt from History of the Romans Under the Empire, Vol. 5 Even when their conquests extended far and wide over islands and continents, Rome and Athens, Syra cuse and Sparta, still continued, unlike England and France, Russia and Turkey, in modern times, to be the names of cities, rather than of countries; all political privileges centred in them, and owed thence with slow and measured pace to the more favoured of their subject communities. It is to this principle of their polity that we owe much of the intense national life, the deep-marked lines of national character, of faith, manners, and opinions, which severally distinguished them, and which seem to have received their form and pressure from the mould of the city walls in which they were first fused together. We have seen, however, in the last chapter, how the exclusive pretensions of the great est of these conquering cities were eventually modi fied by the exigencies of a wide extended sovereignty. The Roman empire claims at last, the first 111 civil ized antiquity, to be considered as in itself apolitical body, independent of its connexion with Rome, the residence of its chief governor. Our history becomes a review of the affairs of a vast unit, the aggregate of a multitude of smaller members, the sum of many combined elements. The title a°xed to it, the History of the Romans rather than of Rome, may serve to mark this important feature in its character; and accordingly it seemed most fitting to commence our survey of the condition of the Roman people under Augustus with a general view of the empire itself, and the social and political hands by which it was held together and compacted into one system. I have reserved for a second chapter the more Special examination of the features of the illustrious city from which it must still derive its chief interest, as Well as its celebrated name. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.