The nature of Rome

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"Rome is not so much a city to be compared to Athens or Sparta as the dynamic process of human consociation, a process that unceasingly pushes and in the end abolishes the limits of the city form." -- Pierre Manent, Metamorphoses of the City, p. 137

This quote comes after Manent discusses the legends of Rome's founding as a city composed of refugees and outcasts. What other polity was formed by refugees and outcasts and took on a universalizing mission?

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