II - EARLY ITALIAN CIVILIZATION: CONSIDERED WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE EVIDENCE AFFORDED ON THE SUBJECT BY THE LATIN LANGUAGE

Summary

‘The contrast between the Greek and Italian character was due to causes which must have lain dormant in the Graeco-Italian period. This moral and intellectual difference, the effects of which are not exhausted even at the present day, developed itself after the separation of the two races. Either nation, in complete independence of the other, formed its own system of the family and the state, of religion and of art; so much so that the common foundation on which, here as elsewhere, both systems rested, has been, in some cases, overgrown and almost lost to sight. Greek civilization sacrificed the general to the particular interest, the nation to the city-community, the city-community to the citizen. Its ideal of life was an existence of beauty and goodness, too often indeed an existence of mere leisure and selfindulgence. In politics it intensified the original exclusiveness of the single districts, and proceeded in later times to break up the authority of the city-community. The Greek religion began by making its gods into men, and ended by denying their existence. In the boyish exercises of the gymnasium the Greeks gave free play to the naked limbs. On the free utterance of thought, in all its splendour and fruitfulness, they imposed no restraint. But in Rome the son was brought up in the fear of his father, the citizen in the fear of his ruler, and all in the fear of the gods.