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.