Excerpt from Caesar's Civil War With Pompeius Most historical parallels are deceptive, but none the less I many may be instructive. Among the latter is that fre quently drawn by an English reader between the Roman and the British Empires. Many problems of government have doubtless been common to the two. The administration of backward races, the reform of decayed monarchies, the adjust ment of local autonomy and national character with effective imperial control, the relations of the circumference with the centre, and the due subordination of great governors to the home government that appoints them these and many more than these have alike presented themselves to the Roman and to the British politician, and have compelled from both their several efforts at solution. In both cases an empire has been built up by a great military and commercial people, endowed by Nature with a rare genius for the government both of themselves and of others, and in each case the value and the endurance of that empire is determined by the moral qualities that underlie its rule. Beyond such general princi ples, the parallel perhaps ceases to be fruitful. The world dominion of the Roman was achieved by the steady expansion of a virile people, living under the freest Of democratic insti tutions, who first extended the hegemony of their city-state on the Tiber over their kinsmen in the Campagna and Latium, then over the whole Italian peninsula, and then, in wave after wave of conquest, over the entire basin and hinterland of the Mediterranean. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.