THE history of Rome might very well be divided into four distinct epochs, each consisting, in round figures, of 250 years.
The first period would comprise the time dating from the foundation of the city, 750 B.C., until the downfall of the monarchy, when Tarquin, after having reigned for 25 years, returned to Rome and found the gates closed against him.
The second period dates from the establishment of the Republic, under the Consuls L. Brutus and P. Valerius, until the first Punic War, as it was called—that is, the first struggle for supremacy between the Empire and Carthage about 250 B.C. The third period would include the wonderful conflict with Hannibal, the conquest of Macedonia and Syria, the subjection of Spain, and ultimately the destruction of Carthage by Scipio Africanus. Certainly the most remarkable events in Roman history occurred about this date, until Caesar was made Consul about 59 B.C., when, without doubt, the power and supremacy of Rome were almost universally recognized. This great man was only fifty-six years of age when he was assassinated He was in our judgment the greatest general, and in many other respects the greatest man, that ever lived. As a statesman and writer, as well as a soldier, he had no equal in his own age, and as we think neither has there appeared one greater than he in any other, and probably as the invader of Britain his name is more interwoven with our own history than that of any other ruler of the Roman Empire.
Moreover, the supremest event of the world’s strange story brought to a termination the third great epoch to which we have referred. At the very close of it, in the days of Augustus, THE great crisis in the world’s history occurred, viz., the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for men may say what they choose about that, but it is the central point in all records, the mighty center from which radiates all that concerns the best and highest and noblest interests of men the wide world over. We affirm unhesitatingly that it forms the crux of the world’s history.
Then began the fourth period, from the death of Augustus, A. D. 14, until say the days of Constantine the Great, as he is called, through whom the Roman Empire was once more consolidated under one Emperor. The recognition of Christianity by this monarch, whether it tended to the advantage of practical religion or not, was assuredly a marvelous epoch in the world’s history. Time and often terrible persecutions had arisen, and myriads of Christians had suffered martyrdom rather than sacrifice to the pagan gods, or take part in the multitudinous festivals arranged to do honor to the many deities of Rome. It was therefore a wonder when persistency and faithfulness were victorious and the great potentate and his rulers professed, not only to tolerate, but to accept personally the tenets of these hitherto persecuted followers of Christ.
It is, however, none the less remarkable that from the days when true religion and political expediency seemed to join hands, the real downfall of the great Empire whose history we are considering began, and no sooner had its recent royal convert laid the foundations of his new Eastern Capital on the promontory of Thrace, that reaches out into the Black Sea, and called it Constantinople, than disintegration set in, and its great builder had hardly passed away when at the very heart of the Empire terrible internal evidence began to be manifest of dissolution and decay.
IF a great thing can be done at all, it can be done easily. But it is that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after long years of gathering strength.