Now your simple savage is often a gentleman.  I don’t mean your Congo Quashi or Borria Bungalee from the back-country blocks of New South Wales—­our Roman bore no resemblance to them; but say your Morocco kaid, your desert chieftain from Tunis or Algiers.  Though for long generations he has lost his old-time civilized attainments, he retains in full his manners, his native dignity, his wild Saharan grace.  But banish him to Paris, and see what happens.  He buys up automobiles,—­and poodles,—­and astrolabes, —­and patent-leather boots,—­and a number of other things he were much better without.  He exchanges his soul for a pass into the demi-monde; and year by year sees him further sunk into depths of vulgarism.  This is precisely what in a few generations happened to Rome.

But meanwhile she was at an apex; touched by some few luminous ideals here and there, and producing some few great gentlemen.  Unprovincial egos; like Scipio Africanus had been edging their way into Roman incarnation; they were swallows of a still far-off summer; they stood for Hellenization, and the modification of Roman rudeness with a little imported culture.  Rome had conquered Magna Graccia, and had seen something there; had felt a want in herself, and brought in slaves like Livius Andronicus to supply it.  Flamininus himself was really a very great gentleman:  a patrician, type of the best men there were in Rome.  He went to Greece thrilled with generous feelings, as to a sacred land.  When he restored to the Greek cities their freedom,—­ handed them back to their own uses and devices, after freeing them from Philip,—­it was with an infinite pride and a high simplicity.  We hear of him overcome in his speech to their representatives on that occasion, and stopping to control the lump in his throat:  conqueror and master of the whole peninsula and the islands, he was filled with reverence, as a great simple-hearted gentleman might be, for the ancient fame and genius of the peoples at his feet.  He and his officers were proud to be admitted to the Games and initiated at Eleusis.  I think this is the finest chapter in early Roman history.  There is the simplicity, pride, and generosity of the Roman gentleman, confronted with a culture he was able to admire, but conscious he did not possess;—­and on the other hand the fine flow of Greek gratitude to the liberator of Greece, in whom the Greeks recognised that of old time, and which had been so rare in their own life.  At this moment Rome blossomed:  a beautiful bloom, we may say.

But it was a fateful moment for her, too.  The Greeks had long lost what capacity they had ever had for stable politics.  Flamininus might hand them back their liberties with the utmost genuineness of heart; but they were not in a condition to use the gift.  Rome soon found that she had no choice but to annex them, one way or another.  They were her proteges; and Antiochus attacked them;—­so then Antiochus had to be fought and conquered.  That fool had great Hannibal with him, and resources with which Hannibal might have crushed Rome; but it did not suit Antiochus that the glory should be Hannibal’s.  Then presently Attalus bequeathed Pergamum to the Senate; which involved Rome in Asia Minor.  So step by step she was compelled to conquer the East.