Greeks And Romans

Time Patrolman Shalten says:

"'...the genius of the Greeks never extended to statecraft.'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 121)

Virgil would have agreed with him. Aeneas's father, Anchises, in Hades, prophesies:

"'Others, for so I can well believe, shall hammer forth more delicately a breathing likeness out of bronze, coax living faces from the marble, plead causes with more skill, plot with their gauge the movements in the sky, and tell the rising of the constellations."
-Virgil, The Aeneid, translated into English prose with an Introduction by WF Jackson Knight (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1982), pp. 172-173.

Thus, "Others" (the Greeks) will be better sculptors, lawyers and astronomers. However:

"'But you, Roman, must remember that you are to guide the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill...'" (ibid., p. 173)

The rest of us needed the Romans to rule us for all time! Indeed, Anchises seems to prophesy an interstellar empire:

"'...Augustus Caesar...shall extend our dominion beyond the Garamantians and the Indians in a region which lies outside the path of the constellations, outside the track of the year and of the sun, where Atlas the Heaven-Bearer holds on his shoulders the turning sphere, inset with blazing stars.'" (p. 171)

Lacking our knowledge of interplanetary and interstellar spaces, Virgil meant a region of the Earth beneath the farthest stars visible on the horizon. Nevertheless, he comes as close as he can to prophesying the Terran Empire of Manuel Argos, Hans Molitor, Dominic Flandry and Chunderban Desai. Like some British Imperialists, Virgil thought that his Empire would last for all time whereas the entire message of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization is that this is never the case.