ss to cherish illusions as to the task: its accomplishment
has become much more arduous than it was fifty years ago; perhaps
because the masses have acquired greater power in every part of the
European-American world, and democracy advances more or less rapidly,
invading everything--the democracy of the technical man, the
merchant, the workman, the well-to-do burgher, all of whom easily
hold themselves aloof from a culture in itself aristocratic. The
accomplishment will become always more and more arduous; for Roman
studies, feeling the new generations becoming estranged from them,
have for the last twenty-five years tended to take refuge in the
tranquil cloisters of learning, of archaeology, in the discreet
concourse of a few wise men, who voluntarily flee the noises of the
world, Fatal thought! Ancient Rome ought to live daily in the mind
of the new social classes that lead onward; ought to irradiate its
immortal light on the new worlds that arise from the deeps of the
modern age, on pain of undergoing a new destruction more calamitous
than that caused by the hordes of Alaric. The day when the history of
Rome and its monuments may be but material for erudition to put into
the museums by the side of the bricks of the palace of Khorsabad, the
cuneiform inscriptions, and the statues of the kings of Assyria, Latin
civilisation will be overwhelmed by a fatal catastrophe.

To hinder the extinction of the great light of Rome in the world, to
prolong indefinitely this ideal survival, which is the continuation of
its material Empire, destroyed centuries ago, there is but one way--to
renew historic studies of Rome, and to maintain intact their universal
value which forms part of common culture. This is what I have tried
to do, seeking to lead back to Roman history the many minds estranged
from it, distracted by so many cares and anxieties and present
questionings, and to fulfil a solemn duty to my fatherland and the
grand traditions of Latin culture. If other histories can grow old, it
is indeed the more needful, exactly because it serves to educate new
generations, to reanimate Roman history, incorporating in it the new
facts constantly discovered by archaeological effort, infusing it
with a larger and stronger philosophical spirit, carrying into it the
matured experience of the world, which learns not only by studying but
also by living.

I do not hesitate to say that every half-century there opens among
civilised peoples a