Tiberius the Tyrant

Synopsis

The contemporary history of the years during which the Roman Empire took organic form is written in terms which tend to disguise the real significance of the change; our attention is attracted almost exclusively to the internal politics of the city of Rome; it is withdrawn from the politics of the Empire; the long struggle which ended by giving the whole civilized world one system of Government, which welded together in orderly association Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Africans, Egyptians, Spaniards, Gauls, Germans, and even Britons, is represented to us as being little more than a constitutional revolution inside the city; we see the external pressure, which forced a revised constitution upon the Roman oligarchy, but we only see it dimly; no Roman5 historian has been at the pains to trace out the process by which the civil administration of the Roman Empire was developed—surely no less wonderful an achievement than the conquests of the Roman generals.

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