Wealth & Money Quote by Goldwin Smith

“That Rome was comparatively great and wealthy is certain” is the kind of sentence a historian uses when he wants to sound modest while smuggling in authority. Goldwin Smith plants his flag with “is certain,” then immediately narrows it with “comparatively,” a small word doing big ideological work. He’s not praising Rome in absolute terms; he’s ranking it. The line belongs to an era when “scientific” history was trying to look like disciplined observation rather than moral storytelling, and Smith adopts that posture: calm, measured, almost bored by the obviousness of Roman power.

The intent is double. On the surface, he’s clearing away debate about Rome’s material dominance so he can move to a more contentious claim about what that dominance meant. Underneath, he’s also insulating himself from hero-worship. By framing Rome’s greatness as relative, he resists the Victorian temptation to turn Rome into an uncomplicated ancestor of modern empire. Rome is “great” next to its rivals, not necessarily great in some timeless, ethical sense.

The subtext is methodological: you can grant the empire its wealth without granting it your admiration. Smith’s diction treats grandeur like a data point, not a romance. That cool distance matters in the late 19th century, when Britain’s own imperial self-image constantly raided Roman history for justification. Smith’s sentence reads like a warning shot: yes, Rome had money and muscle; don’t confuse that with a civilizational alibi.