Importance and Magnitude of the Subject
We shall best show how marvellous and vast our subject is by comparing the most famous Empires
which preceded, and which have been the
note
favourite themes of historians, and measuring
them with the superior greatness of Rome.
There are but three that deserve even to be so
compared and measured: and they are these.
The Persians for a certain length of time were possessed of
a great empire and dominion. But every time they ventured beyond the limits of Asia, they found not only their
empire, but their own existence also in danger. note
The Lacedaemonians, after contending for supremacy in Greece for many generations, when they did get
it, held it without dispute for barely twelve
years. noteThe Macedonians obtained dominion
in Europe from the lands bordering on the Adriatic to the
Danube,—which after all is but a small fraction of this
continent,—and, by the destruction of the Persian Empire,
they afterwards added to that the dominion of Asia. And
yet, though they had the credit of having made themselves
masters of a larger number of countries and states than any
people had ever done, they still left the greater half of the inhabited world in the hands of others. They never so much
as thought of attempting Sicily, Sardinia, or Libya: and as to
Europe, to speak the plain truth, they never even knew of the
most warlike tribes of the West. The Roman conquest, on
the other hand, was not partial. Nearly the whole inhabited
world was reduced by them to obedience: and they left
behind them an empire not to be paralleled in the past or
rivalled in the future. Students will gain from my narrative
a clearer view of the whole story, and of the numerous and
important advantages which such exact record of events
offers.
