Read "The Greatest Story in the World, Period 2" by Horace G. Hutchinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
In the first volume of this _Greatest Story in the World_ we saw how / man lived upon the earth from the earliest times at which we know / anything about him. We followed the story down to about the year / A. D. 100 when the different threads of the story came together into / one hand -- the mighty hand of Rome and of the firmly established Roman / Empire. The whole world, or what the people of that time regarded as / the whole of the world that mattered, was controlled by the Roman / hand. This second volume will be mainly the story of what happened / when the grasp of that hand weakened, and allowed the threads to fall / apart again.
Rome had driven its fine roads, which you may imagine going out, from / the imperial city as their centre, like the spokes of a great wheel, / to the farthest ends of the Empire. And you should notice a / peculiarity about those spokes -- those roads -- that they always went / straight. It did not matter how high a hill they came to, nor how / deep a {2} valley -- unless the hill or the vale side were impossibly / steep, the road never turned. It did not go round the hill: it went / over the top of it and down the other side.