If you rebel, the
invisible sword will flash, and what can you do against Rome
armed, when Rome unarmed frightens the world?"
The argument was pertinent and suggestive, but the secret of
Rome's ascendency consisted in the fact that where she conquered
she dwelt. Wherever the eagles pounced, Rome multiplied herself in
miniature. In the army was the nation, in the legion the city.
Where it camped, presto! a judgment seat and an altar. On the
morrow there was a forum; in a week there were paved avenues; in a
fortnight, temples, porticoes; in a month you felt yourself at
home. Rome built with a magic that startled as surely as the glint
of her sword. Time and again the nations whom Caesar encountered
planned to eliminate his camp. When they reached it the camp had
vanished; in its place was a walled, impregnable town.
As the standards lowered before that town, the pomoerium was
traced. Within it the veteran found a home, without it a wife; and
the family established, the legion that had conquered the soil
with the sword, subsisted on it with the plow. Presently there
were priests there, aqueducts, baths, theatres and games, all the
marvel of imperial elegance and vice. When the aborigine wandered
that way, his seduction was swift.
The enemy that submitted became a subject, not a slave. Rome
commanded only the free. If his goods were taxed, his goods
remained his own, his personal liberty untrammelled.
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