which
modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern times
can only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled
by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We
have not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained this
distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of
power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And
thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of
the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into
rest; after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had
passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation
arose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman
subjects,--then the Empire was at its height of power, its
centralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at the
zenith of its success.

At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first gray
morning-light of the new civilization.

At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber,
contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long
centuries.

There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact
representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with
another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.

Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates the
old civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhood
he has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under one
head. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperor
of the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of the
world flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained in
all elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful,
luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the
face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual
countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine
him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed
in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression
of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite
licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman
civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times
will name as the lowest embodiment of meanne