They thought their own lives
and happiness as nothing in comparison with Rome; and all the free
citizens had a share in the government, so that their city's concerns
were their own. Their religion seems in early times to have been more
solemn and grave than that of the Greeks. Jupiter was their chief god,
the King of gods and men, who held thunderbolts in his hand, and they
had eleven other principal gods; but by the time they had learnt to
write books, they had begun to think these were the same gods as the
Greeks worshipped under other names; they said Jupiter was the same as
Zeus, and told of him all the foolish stories which the worse sort of
Greeks had invented of Zeus, and as their religion grew worse, they
became more selfish, proud, and cruel. At first, their neighbours in
Italy were always fighting with them, and their wars were for life or
death; but after nearly three hundred years of hard struggling, without
one year's peace, the Romans had conquered them all, and had safety at
home. But they had grown too fond of war to rest quietly, so they built
ships and attacked countries farther off, beginning with the great
Phoenician city of Carthage in Africa, which it is said was settled by
Canaanites who fled away from Joshua, and whose first queen was Dido,
Jezebel's niece.
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