that perhaps the manifestation of this advantage
was not made on a sufficient breadth of experiment.

Now let us consider this. Upon the analogy of any possible precedent,
under which Rome could be said to have taken seven centuries in
unfolding her power, our Britain has taken almost fourteen. So long is
the space between the first germination of Anglo-Saxon institutions and
the present expansion of British power over the vast regions of
Hindostan. Most true it is that a very small section of this time and a
very small section of British energies has been applied separately to
the Indian Empire. But precisely the same distinction holds good in the
Roman case. The total expansion of Rome travelled, perhaps, through
eight centuries; but five of these spent themselves upon the mere
_domestic_ growth of Rome; during five she did not so much as attempt
any foreign appropriation. And in the latter three, during which she
did, we must figure to ourselves the separate ramifications of her
influence as each involving a very short cycle indeed of effort or
attention, though collectively involving a long space, separately as
involving a very brief one. If the eye is applied to each conquest
itself, nothing can exhibit less of a slow or gradual expansion than the
Roman system of conquest. It was a shadow which moved so rapidly on the
dial as to be visible and alarming. Had newspapers existed in those
days, or had such a sympathy bound nations together[15] as could have
supported newspapers, a vast league would have been roused by the
advance of Rome. Such a league _was_ formed where something of this
sympathy existed. The kingdoms formed out of the inheritance of
Alexander being in a sense Grecian kingdoms--Grecian in their language,
Grecian by their princes, Grecian by their armies (in their privileged
sections)--_did_ become alarming to the Greeks. And what followed? The
Achaean league, which, in fact, produced the last heroes of
Greece--Aratus, Philopoemen, Cleomenes. But as to Rome, she was too
obscure, too little advertised as a danger, to be separately observed.
But, partly, this arose from her rapidity. Macedonia was taken
separately from Greece. Sicily, which was the advanced port of Greece to
the West, had early fallen as a sort of appanage to the Punic struggle.
And all the rest followed by insensible degrees. In Syria, and again in
Pontus, and in Macedonia, three great kingdoms which to Greece seemed
related rather as