stinct, it would seem impossible that those extended
communities could be formed and sustained, without which man, if he
could exist at all, could certainly never fully develop his
capacities and powers.

However this may be in theory, it is certain in fact, that the work
of bringing up the military power of ancient Rome to its condition
of supremacy over all the civil functions of government, was the
work of men of the most exalted capacities and powers. Marius and
Sylla, Pompey and Caesar, Antony and Augustus, evinced, in all their
deeds, a high degree of sagacity, energy, and greatness of soul.
Mankind, though they may condemn their vices and crimes, will never
cease to admire the grandeur of their ambition, and the
magnificence, comprehensiveness, and efficiency of their plans of
action. The whole known world was the theater of their contests, and
the armies which they organized and disciplined, and which they
succeeded at length in bringing under the control of one central and
consolidated command, formed the most extended and imposing
military power that the world had ever seen. It was not only vast in
extent, but permanent and self-sustaining in character. A wide and
complicated, but most effectual system was adopted for maintaining
it. Its discipline was perfect. Its organization was complete. It
was equally trained to remain quietly at home in its city-like
encampments, in time of peace, or to march, or bivouac, or fight, in
time of war. Such a system could be formed only by men possessed of
mental powers of the highest character; but, once formed, it could
afterward sustain itself; and not only so, but it was found capable
of holding up, by its own inherent power, the most imbecile and
incompetent men, as the nominal rulers of it.

Caligula, for example, the brother of Agrippina, and the reigning
emperor at the time of Nero's birth, was a man wholly unfit to
exercise any high command. He was elevated to the post by the
influence of the army, simply because he was the most prominent man
among those who had hereditary claims to the succession, and was
thus the man whom the army could most easily place in the office of
chieftain, and retain most securely there. His life, however, in the
lofty station to which accident thus raised him, was one of
continual folly, vice and crime. He lived generally at Rome, where
he expended the immense revenues that were at his command in the
most wanton and senseless extravaga