It is not too much to say that Mommsen has no notion whatever of right and wrong. It is not so much that he applauds wrong actions, as that he does not seem to know that right and wrong have anything to do with the matter. No one has set forth more clearly than Mommsen the various stages of the process by which Rome gradually reduced the states round the Mediterranean to a state of dependence—what he, by one of the quasi-technicalities of which we complain, calls a state of clientship. It is, for clear insight into the matter, one of the best parts of the book. But almost every page is disfigured by the writer's unblushing idolatry of mere force. He cannot understand that a small state can have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be anything but a fool.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It is not too much to say that Mommsen has no notion whatever of right and wrong. It is not so much that he applauds wrong actions, as that he does not seem to know that right and wrong have anything to do with the matter. No one has set forth more clearly than Mommsen the various stages of the process by which Rome gradually reduced the states round the Mediterranean to a state of dependence—what he, by one of the quasi-technicalities of which we complain, calls a state of clientship. It is, for clear insight into the matter, one of the best parts of the book. But almost every page is disfigured by the writer's unblushing idolatry of mere force. He cannot understand that a small state can have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be anything but a fool." in the context of "Edward Augustus Freeman, 'Mommsen's History of Rome', Historical Essays, second series, third edition (1889), p. 317" to mean that wisdom is timeless.