[63] An inquiry, or series of inquiries, into the physiological side of social and political development is obviously necessary, and must be made before sociology can on this side attain much scientific precision. I know, however, no general treatise on the subject except an old essay on Changes Produced in the Nervous System by Civilisation, by Dr. Robert Verity (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1839). This is suggestive, but, of course, tentative. Cp. Ferrero, Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans, i, 298-99.
[64] Livy, xxxix, 8-18. See below, pt. iii. ch. iii.
[65] Cp. Salverte, De la Civilisation, p. 52.
[66] The subject is discussed in the author's essay on Mithraism in Pagan Christs.
[67] M. Hochart (Études d'histoire religieuse, 1890, ch. ix) argues that Constantine was never really converted to Christianity; and this is perhaps the best explanation of his long postponement of his baptism.
[68] Compare episodes in the history of the Salvation Army in England (1890), where that body was seen prepared to practise continuous fighting. It had no thought of "Christian" conciliation.
[69] Various causes, the chief being probably Greek piracy, had caused in pre-Roman Etruria a decay of the original seaports. See Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, i, 273.
[70] On this cp. Ihne, Early Rome, p. 6; and Mommsen, ch. iv.
[71] This may have been set up in imitation of the Carthaginian institution of Suffetae, which would be well known to the Etruscans of the monarchic period, who had much traffic with Carthage. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii, 701. But it may also be explained by the simple fact that the original army was divided into two legions (id. ii, 812).
[72] On this see Montesquieu, Grandeur des Romains, c. 1. No one has elucidated so much of Roman history in so little space as Montesquieu has done in this little book, which Buckle rightly set above the Esprit des Lois. (Cp. the eulogy of Taine, in his Tite-Live.) Its real insight may perhaps best be appreciated by comparing it with the modern work of M. Charles Gouraud, Histoire des Causes de la Grandeur de l'Angleterre (1856), in which it will be hard to find any specification of real causes.