Caesar and the Roman Empire

ITALY, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF European lands, has also been the richest in men whom the world has acknowledged as great. Long indeed is the list of her men of letters, her artists, her men of action, and her great priests. Of the world's six greatest poets she has produced two, Virgil and Dante. And twice at least, in ages of general confusion and chaos, it has fallen to Italy to provide a leader strong enough to put an end to anarchy, and by virtue of a powerful personality, to assert the force of a unifying principle... But to the fortunes of Rome, and to the discipline, the tenacity of purpose, and the political skill of her earliest rulers, the Italians owe their position as, in a sense, a chosen people.In order to place Caesar in his right position in the history of Rome and of the world, it is hard to dispense with a review of the growth of the Roman dominion, of the Roman constitution, and of Roman society, up to the date of his birth. But this: volume must be occupied by Caesar himself and his work, and we must be content with the very briefest outline of the evolution of the Roman power, down to that age of storm and peril, when the greatest of Romans—himself of the purest Roman descent— seized forcibly on the helm, and pointed out the state’s true course.