WHAT kind of human beings were these irresistible Romans? What institutions had formed them to such ruthless strength in character and policy?—what homes and schools, what religion and moral code? How did they take from the soil, and by what economic organization and skill did they mold to their uses, the wealth required to equip their growing cities and those ever new armies that never knew rest? What were they like in their streets and shops, their temples and theaters, their science and philosophy, their old age and death? Unless we visualize, scene by scene, this Rome of the early Republic, we shall never understand that vast evolution of customs, morals, and ideas which produced in one age the stoic Cato, in a later age the epicurean Nero, and at last transformed the Roman Empire into the Roman Church.