COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

INFLUENCE OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE. 551
important were the advances made in the sphere of organic
life, and in the general views of comparative zootomy, our
attention is yet more forcibly arrested by those physical experiments
on the passage of a ray of light, which, preceding the
period of the Arabs by an interval of five hundred years, mark
the first step in a newly opened course, and the earliest indication
of a striving towards the establishment of mathematical
physics.
The distinguished men whom we have already named as
shedding a scientific lustre on the age of the imperial rulers
of Rome, were all of Greek origin. The profound arithmetician
and algebraist Diophantus (who was still unacquainted
with the use of symbols), belonged to a later *
period. Amid
the different directions presented by intellectual cultivation in
the Roman empire, the palm of superiority remained with the
Hellenic races, as the older and more happily organised
people, but after the gradual downfall of the Egypto-Alexan drian school, the dimmed sparks of knowledge and of intellec-
tual investigation were scattered abroad, and it was not until
a later period that they reappeared in Greece and Asia Minor.
As is the case in all unlimited monarchies, embracing a vast
extent of the most heterogeneous elements, the efforts of the
Roman government were mainly directed to avert, by mili-
tary restraint and by means of the internal rivalry existing in
their divided administration, the threatened dismemberment
of the political bond ;
to conceal, by an alternation of severity
and mildness, the domestic feuds in the house of the Caesars,
and to give to the different dependencies such an amount of
peace, under the sway of noble rulers, as an unchecked and
patiently endured despotism is able periodically
to afford.
The attainment of universal sway by the Romans certainly
emanated from the greatness of the national character, and
from the continued maintenance of rigid morals, coupled with
a high sense of patriotism. When once universal empire was
attained, these noble qualities were gradually weakened and
altered under the unavoidable influence of the new relations in-
duced. The characteristic sensitiveness of separate individuals
* Letronne shows, from the occurrence of the fanatical murder of the
daughter of Theon of Alexandria, that the much contested epoch of
Diophantus cannot be placed later than the year 389 (Sur I'Origine
grecque des Zodiaques pretendus egyptiens, IS 37, p. 26).