Roman Empire

The truth is that the Empire bequeathed to modern society the legal conception to which all this irregularity is attributable;

Greek philosophy had never been more than a transient fashionable taste with the educated class of Rome itself, and when the new Eastern capital had been created, and the Empire subsequently divided into two, the divorce of the Western provinces from Greek speculation, and their exclusive devotion to jurisprudence, became more decided than ever.

Now, a combination of all the causes, direct and indirect, which contribute to the advancing and perfecting of a science continued to operate on the jurisprudence of Rome through the entire space between the Twelve Tables and the severance of the two Empires,—and that not irregularly or at intervals, but in steadily increasing force and constantly augmenting number.

But the Roman Empire, while it was a tax-taking, was also a legislating empire.

The Roman Empire almost achieved the complete political unity of Europe, and bound parts of three continents under one rule, but the corruption of the military power which held it together led to its inevitable dismemberment.

and those roots must be sought for as far back as the customs of the Germanic tribes who confronted the Roman legions when Britain was still a Roman province and Celtic.

But it remains a notable and, I think, a singular fact that the Germanic type was preserved as a whole, and so little affected by foreign influence, at the very time when the civilization of the Mediterranean lands had become cosmopolitan, and both Hellenic and Roman manners were infected with Asiatic corruption as well as Asiatic enthusiasm.

A Christian is the enemy of no one, much less of the emperor, whom, knowing him to be appointed by his own God, he must of necessity both love and reverence and honour and wish well, together with the whole Roman empire, so long as the world shall stand — for so long it shall stand.