IMPORTANCE OF ROMAN HISTORY.
The importance of Roman history is one of those points which have never perhaps been gainsayed. There may be persons who have their prejudices with regard to the value of ancient history in general, yet even they will not deny that of Roman history. In other branches of knowledge, it either appears as an introduction, or as an integral part of the preparatory discipline. As long as the Roman law continues to hold among us the position which it now has, an accurate knowledge of Roman antiquity will be indispensable. Such will it likewise be for the divine, to whom the results which follow from the connexion of ecclesiastical with profane history are quite lost, if he be deficient in the knowledge of Roman history and Roman antiquities. With regard to many another science, there are fewer relations in which Roman history becomes of any importance; yet even then points of contact will not be wanting. It has its importance, for the history of human life in general, for the history of diseases, &c. Yet if, taking a wider and scientific view, we look on history as an independent branch of knowledge, that of Rome is the most important of all. All the ancient histories merge into the Roman, all the modern spring from it. Not only the philologist who occupies himself from preference with Roman literature, ought to be so familiar with the history and the antiquities of that people, that he may read its authors as he would contemporaries; but he also ought to do this, who makes the Greek his principal task, otherwise he would remain one-sided in his views. At all events, he ought to be acquainted with the concluding period of the Greek people, and to know how it fared under the rule of the Romans. If we balance the two histories against each other, the Roman one has by far the better claim to the higher rank. A small population enlarges itself, rules at first over thousands,then over hundreds of thousands, then lords it over the world from the rising to the setting sun; the whole of the west adopts their language and institutions, and their laws are to this day still in force for millions,—such greatness has no parallel in history. Add to this, the individual greatness of the men; the spectacle of all the states waning before this star; the extraordinary character of the institutions by which this is partly brought about; all this imparts to Roman history its peculiar durability and importance. For these reasons, even in the middle ages, in those times when learning was most neglected, it was, although in an imperfect form, yet always held in honour as history. By the Roman literature, science and civilization were first restored; Dante and Petrarch felt as warmly for the men of the Roman era, as an old Roman himself would have done. Valerius Maximus was during the middle ages the mirror of virtue, which with the Holy Scriptures was read by every one. The tribune Rienzi is said to have read all the books of the ancients. The Teutonic Knights had a book, still extant at Königsberg, which was read during dinner, containing stories from the Old Testament, and from the heroic age of Rome.[33]Thus since the restoration of learning to the present day, although Roman history was not always very profitably studied, there has notwithstanding ever been in every one a certain vague feeling which told them that it was transcendently important and instructive.