>>83955102https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXw-254aIkAA relevant fragment:
,,Being Roman did not mean being subject,
in the sense that one savage tribe will enslave another,
or in the sense that the cynical politicians of recent times watched
with a horrible hopefulness for the evanescence of the Irish.
Both conquerors and conquered were heathen, and both had the
institutions which seem to us to give an inhumanity to heathenism:
the triumph, the slave-market, the lack of all the sensitive nationalism
of modern history. But the Roman Empire did not destroy nations;
if anything, it created them. Britons were not originally
proud of being Britons; but they were proud of being Romans.
The Roman steel was at least as much a magnet as a sword.
In truth it was rather a round mirror of steel, in which every people
came to see itself. For Rome as Rome the very smallness of the civic
origin was a warrant for the largeness of the civic experiment.
Rome itself obviously could not rule the world, any more than Rutland.
I mean it could not rule the other races as the Spartans ruled
the Helots or the Americans ruled the negroes. A machine so huge
had to be human; it had to have a handle that fitted any man's hand.
The Roman Empire necessarily became less Roman as it became
more of an Empire; until not very long after Rome gave conquerors
to Britain, Britain was giving emperors to Rome."
