27. Q. What was the one business of the state? A. Conquest, in a two-fold
sense: first, subjugation by arms; second, consequent upon subjugation,
rule by law.
28. Q. What is said of the cultivation of letters by Rome? A. Letters she
almost wholly neglected until her conquest of the world was complete.
29. Q. In what way did the Romans make peace with other nations? A. They
never made peace but as conquerors.
30. Q. What course did the Romans take in regard to whatever superior
features they found in the military scheme of other nations? A. They did
not hesitate to transfer and adopt it into their own.
31. Q. What nations in turn enjoyed the honor of furnishing to the Romans
the model for their sword? A. The Spaniards and the Gauls.
32. Q. From whom did Rome learn how to order her encampment? A. From
Pyrrhus.
33. Q. From what people did Rome learn to build ships? A. From the
Carthaginians.
34. Q. As soon as Rome had conquered a people what did she make that
people? A. Her ally.
35. Q. What phrase has Rome made a proverb to all time of false dealing
between nations? A. “Punic faith.”
36. Q. At whose expense did Rome do her conquering and her governing? A.
At the expense of the conquered and the governed.
37. Q. What effect did war have upon the wealth of Rome? A. She never
herself became poorer, but always richer, by war.
38. Q. What was all that enormous accumulation of public and private
resources which made Rome rich and great? A. It was pure plunder.
39. Q. What is a momentous fact in regard to the population of the Roman
Empire? A. That in the end over one-half the population were slaves.
40. Q. Notwithstanding the injustice of Rome, how did she govern as
compared with other ancient nations? A. She governed more beneficently
than any other ancient nation.
41. Q. What blessing did she extend to all the countries she conquered?
A. The blessing of stable government, of an administration of law at
least comparatively just and wise.
42. Q. What effect did Rome have upon the civilization of those she
subjugated? A. After her fashion she civilized where she had subjugated.
43. Q. What did Rome do that is to be accounted an immeasurable blessing
to mankind? A. She made the world politically one, for the unhindered
universal spread of Christianity.
44. Q. Who are some of the historians mentioned as having written works
on the history of Rome, that are commended to the reader? A. Creighton,
Leighton, Liddell, Mommsen, Merivale, Arnold and Gibbon.
45. Q. What work on the literature of Rome is spoken of as perhaps
the best manual of Latin letters? A. Cruttwell’s “History of Roman
Literature.”
46. Q. During what period was Roman literature produced, that is usually
termed classic? A. From about 80 B. C. to A. D. 108, covering a space of
188 years.
47. Q. What writer begins, and what one ends this period? A. Cicero
begins and Tacitus ends it.
48. Q. Who may be regarded as the beginner of Latin literature? A. Livius
Andronicus, a writer of tragedy about twenty-four years before Christ.
49. Q. Who wrote a sort of epic on the first Punic war, esteemed by
scholars one of the chief lost things in Roman literature? A. Nævius.
50. Q. What is the next great name in Latin literature, and what is said
of his influence and example? A. Ennius, and his influence and example
decisively fixed the form of the Latin poetry.