As for the culture, the civilization of Rome, this is
even more true. It has suffered a complete transformation, partly by
natural growth, partly by absorption of totally alien elements, such
as a Semitic religion, and certain Teutonic governmental and social
customs; but the process was not one of extinction, but one of growth
and transformation, both from within and by the accretion of outside
elements. In France and Spain the inheritance of Latin blood is small;
but the Roman culture which was forced on those countries has been
tenaciously retained by them, throughout all their subsequent ethnical
and political changes, as the basis on which their civilizations have
been built. Moreover, the permanent spreading of Roman influence was
not limited to Europe. It has extended to and over half of that New
World which was not even dreamed of during the thousand years of
brilliant life between the birth and the death of Pagan Rome. This New
World was discovered by one Italian, and its mainland first reached
and named by another; and in it, over a territory many times the size
of Trajan's empire, the Spanish, French, and Portuguese adventurers
founded, beside the St. Lawrence and the Amazon, along the flanks of
the Andes and in the shadow of the snow-capped volcanoes of Mexico,
from the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan, communities, now
flourishing and growing apace, which in speech and culture, and even
as regards one strain in their blood, are the lineal heirs of the
ancient Latin civilization.
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