Rome hulks large on the landscape of our historical memory. Among history's hills and valleys the Roman Empire stands out, a craggy peak dominating the horizon. Our civilization, like others, springs from many nations and peoples, but ancient Rome and the empire its people created have a continuing fascination for present-day Americans. The mummies of Egypt intrigue us by their mystery, and the pyramids impress us by their sheer massiveness, but to most of us Egypt is but an historical curiosity to contemplate in a museum on a Sunday afternoon. Likewise, our memory of Greece is piecemeal and-fragmented, transmitted to us as a melange of literary and intellectual masterpieces. College students read Plato and Aristotle for philosophy, Euripides and Sophocles for drama, and Homer for epic, but Greece conjures no political or military grandeur as a people or an empire.