could not.  But Italy’s turn came before Spain’s; and all Hamilcar’s haughty heroism, and Hannibal’s magnanimous genius, went for nothing; and Rome, the admirable and unlovely, that had suffered the Caudine Forks, and then conquered Samnium and beheaded that noble generous Samnite Gaius Pontius, conquered in turn the conqueror at Cannae, and did for his reputation what she had done with the Samnite hero’s person:  chopped its head off, and dubbed him in perfect sincerity ‘perfidus Hannibal.’  Over that corpse she stood, at the end of the third century B.C., mistress of Italy and the Italian islands; with proud Carthage at her feet; and the old cultured East, that had known of her existence since the time of Aristotle at least, now keenly aware of her as the strongest thing in the Mediterranean world.

Now while she had been a little provincial town in an Italy deep in pralaya, Numa’s religion, what remained of it, had been enough to keep her life from corruption.  Each such impulse from the heaven-world’s, in its degree, an elixiral tincture to sweeten life and keep it wholesome; some, like Buddhism, being efficient for long ages and great empires; some only for tiny towns like early Rome.  What we may call the exoteric basis of Numaism was a ritual of many ceremonies connected with home-life and agriculture, and designed to keep alive a feeling for the sacredness of these.  It was calculated for its cycle:  you could have given no high metaphysical system to peasant-bandits of that type;—­you could not take the Upanishads to Afghans or Abyssinians today.  But as soon as that cycle was ended, and Rome was called on to come out into the world, there was need of a new force and a new sanction.

Has it occurred to you to wonder why, in that epochal sixth century B.C., when in so many lands the Messengers of Truth were turning away from the official Mysteries, and preaching their Theosophy upon a new plan broadcast among the peoples, Pythagoras, after wandering the east and west to gather up the threads of wisdom, should have elected not to return to Greece, but to settle in Italy and found his Movement there?  I suppose the reason was this:  He knew in what direction the cycles should flow, and that the greatest need of the future ages would be for a redeemed Italy; he foresaw, or Those who sent him foresaw, that it was Italy should mold the common life of Europe for a couple of thousand years.  Greece was rising then, chiefly on the planes of intellect and artistic creation; but Italy was to rise after a few centuries on planes much more material, and therefore with a force much more potent and immediate in its effects in this world.  The Age of Greece was nearer to the Mysteries; which might be trusted to keep at least some knowledge of Truth alive; the Age of Italy, farther away and on a lower plane, would be in need of a Religion.  So he chose Croton, a Greek city, because if he had gone straight to the barbarous Italians, he could have