Note 12 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Cp. A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, 1853, i, 610-615; Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, 1893, p. 25. When Professor Ferrero (Greatness and Decline of Rome, Eng. trans. 1907, i, 5) pronounces that "The Romans were a primitive people without the defects peculiar to a primitive people," he sets up a needless mystification. They had the defects of their own culture stage, which was far beyond that of "primitives" in the general sense of the term. They were "semi-civilised barbarians," with a long past of institutional life.