to making it actually the Occidental Egypt. From Velleius we
learn that under Tiberius Gaul rendered to the Empire as much as did
Egypt, and that Gaul and Egypt were considered alike the two richest
imperial provinces.

As a political interest had at first impelled Caesar to annex Gaul, an
immediate financial interest urged Augustus to continue the work,
to take care of the new province. Then the historic law that I have
already enunciated to you, the law by which the efforts of men result
far differently from that which they had intended, was verified anew
by Augustus also, and in a new form. He had created his Gallic policy
to augment the revenues of the Empire; the consequences of this fiscal
policy, necessity-inspired, were greater than he and his friends ever
dreamed. The winter of 15-14 B.C. is a notable date in the story of
Latin civilisation, for then the destiny of the Empire was irrevocably
settled; the Roman Empire will be made up of two parts, the Oriental
and the Occidental, each part sufficiently strong to withstand
being overcome by the other; it will be neither an Asiatic, nor a
Celtic-Latin, but a mixed Empire: between both parts, Italy will rule
for two centuries more, and Rome, an immense city, at once Oriental
and Latin, will keep the metropolitan crown won from the enfeebled
East, and dominate the immature barbarian West.

Speaking of Cleopatra, I have shown you how great was the Oriental
peril that threatened in the last century of the Republic to wipe out
Rome. What miraculous force saved it? Gaul. Suppose that the army of
Caesar had been exterminated at Alesia; suppose that Rome, discouraged,
had abandoned its Gallic enterprise as it had done with Persia, after
the disaster of Crassus and the failure of Antony; or suppose that
Gaul had been a poor province, sterile and unpopulous, like many a
Danube district; Rome could not have held out long as the seat of
imperial government, just as to-day the capital of the Russian Empire
could not maintain itself at Vladivostok or Harbin. It would have been
necessary to move the metropolis to a richer and more populous region.
That Gaul grew rich and was Romanised, changed the state of things.
When Rome possessed beyond the Alps in Europe a province as large and
as full of resources as Egypt; when there was the same interest in
defending it as in defending Egypt, Italy was well placed to govern
both. The Egypt of the Occident counterbalanced the Egypt of th