d untraceable in the
universal chaos. But the rich man's ruins stood out in bolder relief; he
had his lands still; he still had slaves; he could rebuild his home; and
he had his way.

But ever afterwards, though the Republic and the Empire spent the wealth
of nations in beautifying the city, the trace of that first defeat
remained. Dark and narrow lanes wound in and out, round the great
public squares, and within earshot of the broad white streets, and the
time-blackened houses of the poor stood huddled out of sight behind the
palaces of the rich, making perpetual contrast of wealth and poverty,
splendour and squalor, just as one may see today in Rome, in London, in
Paris, in Constantinople, in all the mistress cities of the world that
have long histories of triumph and defeat behind them.

The first Rome sprang from the ashes of the Alban volcano, the second
Rome rose from the ashes of herself, as she has risen again and again
since then. But the Gauls had done Rome a service, too. In crushing her
to the earth, they had crushed many of her enemies out of existence; and
when she stood up to face the world once more, she fought not to beat
the AEquians or the Etruscans at her gates, but to conquer Italy. And by
steady fighting she won it all, and brought home the spoils and divided
the lands; here and there a battle lost, as in the bloody Caudine pass,
but always more battles won, and more, and more, sternly relentless to
revolt. Brutus had seen his own sons' heads fall at his own word; should
Caius Pontius, the Samnite, be spared, because he was the bravest of the
brave? To her faithful friends Rome was just, and now and then
half-contemptuously generous.

The idle Greek fine gentlemen of Tarentum sat in their theatre one day,
overlooking the sea, shaded by dyed awnings from the afternoon sun,
listening entranced to some grand play,--the Oedipus King, perhaps, or
Alcestis, or Medea. Ten Roman trading ships came sailing round the
point; and the wind failed, and they lay there with drooping sails,
waiting for the land breeze that springs up at night. Perhaps some rough
Latin sailor, as is the way today in calm weather when there is no work
to be done, began to howl out one of those strange, endless songs which
have been sung down to us, from ear to ear, out of the primeval Aryan
darkness,--loud, long drawn out, exasperating in its unfinished cadence,
jarring on the refined Greek ear, discordant with the actor's finely