FORMATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

The second of the three great peninsulas of southern Europe, that which lies between the other two, is that of Italy. ?Different meanings of the name Italy.? The name of Italy has been used in several meanings at different times, but it has always meant either the whole or a part of the land which we now call Italy. The name gradually spread itself from the extreme south to the north.[4] At the time when our survey begins, the name did not go beyond the long narrow peninsula itself; and indeed it hardly took in the whole of that. ?Its meaning under the Roman commonwealth.? During the time of the Roman commonwealth Italy did not reach beyond the little rivers Macra on one side, near Luna, and Rubico on the other side, near Ariminum. The land to the north, as far as the Alps, was not counted for Italy till after the time of CÆsar. But the Alps are the natural boundary which fence off the peninsular land from the great mass of central Europe; so that, looking at the matter as a piece of geography, we may count the whole land within the Alps as Italy. It will be at once seen that the Italian peninsula, though so long and narrow, is by no means cut up into promontories and smaller peninsulas as the Greek peninsula is. Nor is it surrounded by so many islands. It is only quite in the south, where the long narrow peninsula splits off into two smaller ones, that the coast has at all the character of the Greek coast, and there only in a much slighter degree. ?The Italian islands.? Close by this end of Italy lies the great island of Sicily, whose history has always been closely connected with that of Italy. Further off lie the two other great islands of Corsica and Sardinia, which in old times were not reckoned to belong to Italy at all. Besides these there are several smaller islands, Elba and others, along the Italian coast; but they lie a good way from each other, and do not form any marked feature in the geography. There is nothing at all like even the group of islands off western Greece, much less like the endless multitude, great and small, in the ÆgÆan. Through the whole length of the peninsula, like a backbone, runs the long chain of the Apennines. These branch off from the Alps in north-western Italy near the sea, and run through the whole length of the country to the very toe of the boot, as the Italian peninsula has been called from its shape. From all this it follows that, though Italy was the land which was destined in the end to have the rule over all the rest, yet the people of Italy were not likely to begin to make themselves a name so early as the Greeks did. Least of all were they likely to take in the same way to a sea-faring life, and to plant colonies in far off lands.

§ 1. The Inhabitants of Italy and Sicily.

We seem to have somewhat clearer signs in Italy than we have in Greece of the men who dwelled in the land before the Aryans who appear as its historical inhabitants came into it. ?Ligurians.? On the coast of Liguria, the land on each side of the city of Genoa, a land which was not reckoned Italian in early times, we find people who seem not to have been Aryan. And these Ligurians seem to have been part of a race which was spread through Italy and Sicily before the Aryan settlements, and to have been akin to the non-Aryan inhabitants of Spain and southern Gaul, of whom the Basques on each side of the Pyrenees remain as a remnant. ?Etruscans.? And in historical times a large part of Italy was held, and in earlier times a still larger part seems to have been held, by the Etruscans. These are a people about whose origin and language there have been many theories, but nothing can as yet be said to be certainly known. These Etruscans, in historical times, formed a confederacy of twelve cities in the land west of the Apennines, between the Macra and the Tiber; and it is believed that in earlier times they had settlements both more to the north, on the Po, and more to the south, in Campania. If they were a non-Aryan race, the part of the non-Aryans in the geography and history of Italy becomes greater than it has been in any part of Western Europe except Spain.

But whatever we make of the Etruscans, the rest of Italy in the older sense was held by various branches of an Aryan race nearly allied to the Greeks, whom we may call the Italians. Of this race there were two great branches. One of them, under various names, seems to have held all the southern part of the western coast of Italy, and to have spread into Sicily. Some of the tribes of this branch seem to have been almost as nearly akin to the Greeks as the Epeirots and other kindred nations on the east side of the Hadriatic. ?Latins.? Of this branch of the Italian race, the most famous people were the Latins; and it was the greatest Latin city, the border city of the Latins against the Etruscans, the city of Rome on the Tiber, which became, step by step, the mistress of Latium, of Italy, and of the Mediterranean world. ?Opicans.? The other branch, which held a much larger part of the peninsula, taking in the Sabines, Æquians, Volscians, Samnites, Lucanians, and other people who play a great part in the Roman history, may perhaps be classed together as Opicans or Oscans, in distinction from the Latins, and the other tribes allied to them. These tribes seem to have pressed from the eastern, the Hadriatic, coast of Italy, down upon the nations to the south-west of them, and to have largely extended their borders at their expense.

But part of ancient Italy, and a still larger part of Italy in the modern sense, was inhabited by nations other than the Italians. ?Iapygians.? In the heel of the boot were the Iapygians, a people of uncertain origin, but who seem in any case to have had a great gift of receiving the Greek language and manners. ?Gauls.? And in the northern part, in the lands which were not then counted as part of Italy, were the Gauls, a Celtic people, akin to the Gauls beyond the Alps, and whose country was therefore called Cisalpine Gaul or Gaul on this side of the Alps. They were found on both sides of the Po, and on the Hadriatic coast they seem to have stretched in early times almost as far south as Ancona. ?Veneti.? In the north-east corner of Italy were yet another people, the Veneti, perhaps of Illyrian origin, whose name long after was taken by the city of Venice. But during the whole time with which we have to do, there was no city so called, and the name of Venetia is always the name of a country.

All these nations we may look on as the original inhabitants of Italy; that is, all were there before anything like contemporary history begins.[5] But besides these original nations, there were in one part of Italy many Greek colonies, and also in the island of Sicily. Some cities of Italy claimed to be Greek colonies, without any clear proof that they were so. But there seems no reason to doubt that KymÊ or CumÆ on the western coast of Italy, and AnkÔn or Ancona on the Hadriatic, were solitary Greek colonies far away from any other Greek settlements. CumÆ, though so far off, is said to have been the earliest Greek colony in Italy. But where the Greeks mainly settled was in the two lesser peninsulas, the heel and the toe of the boot, into which the great peninsula of Italy divides at its southern end. Here, as was before said, there is a nearer approach to the kind of coast to which the Greeks were used at home. Here then arose a number of Greek cities, stretching from the extreme south almost up to CumÆ. As in the case of the Greek cities in Asia, the time of greatness of the Italian Greeks came earlier than that of the Greeks in Greece itself. In the sixth century B.C. some of these Greek colonies in Italy, as Taras or Tarentum, KrotÔn or Crotona, Sybaris, and others, were among the greatest cities of the Greek name. But, as the Italian nations grew stronger, the Greek cities lost their power, and many of them, CumÆ among them, fell into the hands of Italian conquerors, and lost their Greek character more or less thoroughly. Others remained Greek till they became subject to Rome, and the Greek speech and manners did not quite die out of southern Italy till ages after the Christian Æra.

The geography and history of the great island of Sicily, which lies so near to the toe of the boot, cannot be kept apart from those of Italy. The mainland and the island were, to a great extent, inhabited by the same nations. The Sikanians in the western part of the island may not unlikely have been akin to the Ligurians and Basques; but the Sikels, who gave their name to the island, and who are the people with whom the Greeks had most to do, were clearly of the Italian stock, and were nearly allied to the Latins. ?Phoenician and Greek colonies.? The Phoenicians of Carthage planted some colonies in the western and northern parts of the island, the chief of which was the city which the Greeks called Panormos, the modern capital Palermo. But the western and southern sides of the triangle were full of Greek cities, which are said to have been founded from the eighth century B.C. to the sixth. Several of these, especially Syracuse and Akragas or Agrigentum, were among the chief of Greek cities; and from them the Greek speech and manners gradually spread themselves over the natives, till in the end Sicily was reckoned as wholly a Greek land. But for some centuries Sicilian history is chiefly made up of struggles for the mastery between Carthage and the Greek cities. This was in truth a struggle between the Aryan and the Semitic race, and we shall see that, many ages after, the same battle was again fought on the same ground.

§ 2. Growth of the Roman power in Italy.

The history of ancient Italy, as far as we know it, is the history of the gradual conquest of the whole land by one of its own cities; and the changes in its political geography are mainly the changes which followed the gradual bringing of the whole peninsula under the Roman dominion. But the form which the conquests of Rome took hindered those conquests from having so great an effect on the map as they otherwise might have had. The cities and districts of Italy, as they were one by one conquered by Rome, were commonly left as separate states, in the relation of dependent alliance, from which most of them were step by step promoted to the rights of Roman citizenship. ?Different positions of the Italian cities.? An Italian city might be a dependent ally of Rome; it might be a Roman colony with the full franchise or a colony holding the inferior Latin franchise; or it might have been actually made part of a Roman tribe. All these were very important political differences; but they do not make much difference in the look of things on the map. The most important of the changes which can be called strictly geographical belong to the early days of Rome, when there were important national movements among the various races of Italy. ?Origin of Rome.? Rome arose at the point of union of the three races, Latin, Oscan, and Etruscan, and it arose from an union between the Latin and Oscan races. ?Rome a Latin city.? Two Latin and one Sabine settlements seem to have joined together to form the city of Rome; but the Sabine element must have been thoroughly Latinized, and Rome must be counted as a Latin city, the greatest, though very likely the youngest, among the cities of Latium.

Rome, planted on a march, rose, in the way in which marchlands often do rise, to supremacy among her fellows. Our first authentic record of the early commonwealth sets Rome before us as bearing rule over the whole of Latium. This dominion she seems to have lost soon after the driving out of the kings, and some of her territory right of the Tiber seems to have become Etruscan. Presently Rome appears, no longer as mistress of Latium, but as forming one member of a triple league concluded on equal terms with the Latins as a body, and with the Hernicans. ?Wars with her neighbours.? This league was engaged in constant wars with its neighbours of the Oscan race, the Æquians and Volscians, by whom many of the Latin cities were taken. ?More distant wars.
B.C.396.? But the first great advance of Rome’s actual dominion was made on the right bank of the Tiber, by the taking of the Etruscan city of Veii. ?B.C.343.? Fifty years later Rome began to engage in more distant wars; and we may say generally that the conquest of Italy was going on bit by bit for eighty years more. ?B.C.296.? By the end of that time, all Italy, in the older sense, was brought in one shape or another under the Roman dominion. The neighbouring districts, both Latin and of other races, had been admitted to citizenship. Roman and Latin colonies were planted in various parts of the country; elsewhere the old cities, Etruscan, Samnite, Greek, or any other, still remained as dependent allies of Rome. ?Incorporation of the Italian states.
B.C.89.? Presently Rome went on to win dominion out of Italy; but the Italian states still remained in their old relation to Rome, till the Italian allies received the Roman franchise after the Social or Marsian war. The Samnites alone held out, and they may be said to have been altogether exterminated in the wars of Sulla. The rest of Italy was Roman.

§ 3. The Western Provinces.

The great change in Roman policy, and in European geography as affected by it, took place when Rome began to win territory out of Italy. The relation of these foreign possessions to the ruling city was quite different from that of the Italian states. The foreign conquests of Rome were made into provinces. ?Nature of the Roman Provinces.? A province was a district which was subject to Rome, and put under the rule of a Roman governor, which was not done with the dependent allies in Italy. But it must be borne in mind that, though we speak of a province as having a certain geographical extent, yet there might be cities within its limits whose formal relation to Rome was that of dependent, or even of equal, alliance. There might also be Roman and Latin colonies, either colonies really planted or cities which had been raised to the Roman or Latin franchise. All these were important distinctions as regarded the internal government of the different states; still practically all alike formed part of the Roman dominion. In a geographical survey it will therefore be enough to mark the extent of the different provinces, without attending to their political, or more truly municipal, distinctions, except in a few cases where they are of special importance.

The provinces then are the foreign dominions of Rome, and they fall naturally into two, or rather three, divisions. There are the provinces of the West, in which the Romans had chiefly to contend with nations much less civilized than themselves, and in which therefore the provincials gradually adopted the language and manners of their conquerors. But in the provinces to the east of the Hadriatic, the Greek language and Greek manners had become the language and manners of civilized life, and their supremacy was not supplanted by those of Rome. And in the more distant parts, as in Syria and Egypt, the Greek civilization was a mere varnish; the mass of the people still kept to their old manners and languages as they were before the Macedonian conquests. In these countries therefore the Latin tongue and Roman civilization made but little progress. The Roman conquests went on on both sides of the Hadriatic at the same time, but it was to the west that they began. The first Roman province however forms a sort of intermediate class by itself, standing between the eastern and the western.

This first Roman province was formed in the great island of Sicily, which, by its geographical position, belongs to the western part of Europe, while the fact that Greek became the prevailing language in it rather connects it with the eastern part. ?First Roman possessions in the island. B.C.241.? The Roman dominion in Sicily began when the Carthaginian possessions in the island were given up to Rome, as the result of the first Punic war. But, as HierÔn of Syracuse had helped Rome against Carthage, his kingdom remained in alliance with Rome, and was not dealt with as a conquered land. ?Conquest of Syracuse. B.C.212.? It was only when Syracuse turned against Rome in the second Punic war that it was, on its conquest, formally made a Roman possession. ?B.C.132.? Eighty years later the condition of Sicily under the Roman government was finally settled, and it may be taken as a type of the endless variety of relations in which the different districts and cities throughout the Roman dominions stood to the ruling commonwealth. ?State of Sicily.? The greater part of the island became simply subject; the land was held to be forfeited to the Roman People, and the former inhabitants held it simply as tenants on payment of a tithe. But some cities were called free, and kept their land; others remained in name independent allies of the Roman People. Other cities were afterwards raised to the Latin franchise; in others Latin or Roman colonies were planted, and one Sicilian city, that of Messana, received the full citizenship of Rome. It must be borne in mind that these different relations, these exceptionally favoured cities and districts, are found, not only in Sicily, but throughout all the provinces. ?Greek civilization of Sicily.? Sicily, by the time of the conquest, was looked on as a thoroughly Greek land. The Greek language and manners had now spread themselves everywhere among the Sikels and the other inhabitants of the island. And Sicily remained a thoroughly Greek land, till, ages afterwards, it again became, as it had been in the days of the Greek and Phoenician colonies, a battle-field of Aryan and Semitic races in the days of the Mahometan conquests.

The two great islands of Sardinia and Corsica seem almost as natural appendages to Italy as Sicily itself; but their history is very different. They have played no important part in the history of the world. The original stock of their inhabitants seems to have been akin to the non-Aryan element in Spain and Sicily. The attempts at Greek colonization in them were but feeble, and they passed under the dominion, first of Carthage and then of Rome, without any important change in their condition. ?B.C.238.? These two islands became a Roman province, which was always reckoned one of the most worthless of provinces, in the interval between the first and second Punic wars.

Thus far the Roman dominions did not reach beyond what we should look upon as the natural extent of the dominion of an Italian power. Indeed, as long as Italy did not reach to the Alps, we should say that it had not reached the natural extent of an Italian dominion. But the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul cannot be separated from the general conquest of Western Europe. The Roman conquest of Gaul and Spain, by gradually spreading the Latin language and Roman civilization over those countries, created two of the chief nations and languages of modern Europe. But the process was simply the continuation of a process which began within the borders of what we now call Italy. Gaul within the Alps was as strictly a foreign conquest as Spain or as Gaul beyond the Alps. Only the geographical position of Cisalpine Gaul allowed it to be easily and speedily incorporated with Italy in a way which the lands beyond the Alps could not be. The beginnings of conquest in this direction took place after the end of the Samnite wars. ?Foundation of Sena Gallica. B.C.282.? Then the colony of Sena Gallica, now Sinigaglia, was founded on Gaulish soil, and it was presently followed by the foundation of Ariminum or Rimini. ?Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. B.C.201-191.? The Roman arms were carried beyond the Po in the time between the first and the second Punic war; after the second Punic war, Cisalpine Gaul was thoroughly conquered, and was secured by the foundation of many Roman and Latin colonies. ?B.C.43.? The Roman and Latin franchises were gradually extended to most parts of the country, and at last Cisalpine Gaul was formally incorporated with Italy.

Closely connected with the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul was the conquest of the other non-Italian lands within the boundaries of modern Italy. These were Liguria to the south-east of Cisalpine Gaul and Venetia to the north-west. Both these lands held out longer than Cisalpine Gaul; but by the time of Augustus they were all, together with the peninsula of Istria, counted as part of Italy. ?Foundation of Aquileia, B.C.183. ? The dominion of Rome in this region was secured at an early stage of the conquest by the foundation of the great colony of Aquileia. We thus see that, not only Venice, but Milan, Pavia, Verona, Ravenna, and Genoa, cities which played so great a part in the after history of Italy, arose in lands which were not originally Italian. But we also see that Italy, with the boundaries given to it by Augustus, took in a somewhat larger territory to the north-east than the kingdom of Italy does now.

The lands within the Alps may be fairly said to have been conquered by Rome in self-defence, and we cannot help looking on the three great islands as natural parts of an Italian dominion. The conquests of the Romans in lands altogether beyond their own borders may be said to have begun in Western Europe with the conquest of Spain, which began before that of Transalpine Gaul. ?Connexion of Spain and Gaul.? Spain and Gaul, using the names in the geographical sense, have much which binds them together. ?Iberians in Spain.? On the borders of the two countries traces are still left of the old non-Aryan inhabitants who still speak the Basque language. These represent the old Iberian inhabitants of Spain and Gaul, who, when our history begins, stretched as far into Gaul as the Garonne. ?Celts.? But the Celts, the first wave of the Aryan migration in Europe, had pressed into both Gaul and Spain; in Gaul they had, when trustworthy history begins, already occupied by far the greater part of the country. ?Greek and? The Mediterranean coasts of Gaul and Spain were also connected together by the sprinkling of Greek colonies along those shores, of which Massalia was the head. And, beside the primitive non-Aryan element, there was an intrusive non-Aryan element also. ?Phoenician settlements.? In southern Spain several Phoenician settlements had been made, the chief of which was Gades or Cadiz, beyond the straits, the one great Phoenician city on the Ocean. And between the first and second Punic wars Carthage obtained a large Spanish dominion, of which New Carthage or Carthagena was the capital.

It was the presence of these last settlements which first brought Spain under the Roman dominion. ?First Roman province in Spain.? Saguntum was an ally of Rome, and its taking by Hannibal was the beginning of the second Punic war. ?B.C.218-206.? The campaigns of the Scipios during that war led to the gradual conquest of the whole country. ?B.C.49.? The Carthaginian possessions first became a Roman province, while Gades became a favoured ally of Rome, and at last was admitted to the full Roman franchise. ?B.C.133.? Meanwhile, the gradual conquest of the rest of the country went on, till, after the taking of Numantia, all Spain, except the remote tribes in the north-west, had become a Roman possession. ?Final conquest. B.C.19.? These tribes, the Cantabrians and their neighbours, were not fully subdued till the time of Augustus. ?Romanization of Spain.? But long before that time the Latin language and Roman manners had been fast spreading through the country, and in Augustus’ time southern Spain was altogether Romanized. It was only in a small district close to the Pyrenees that the ancient language held out, as it has done ever since.

The conquest of Spain, owing to the connexion of the country with Carthage, thus began while a large part even of Cisalpine Gaul was still unsubdued. And the Roman arms were not carried into Gaul beyond the Alps till the conquest of Spain was pretty well assured. ?B.C.122.? The foundation of the first Roman colony at AquÆ SextiÆ, the modern Aix, was only eleven years later than the fall of Numantia. The Romans stepped in as allies of the Greek city of Massalia, and, as usual, from helping their allies they took to conquering on their own account. ?The Transalpine Province. B.C.125-105.? A Roman province, including the colonies of Narbonne and Toulouse, was thus formed in the south-eastern part of Transalpine Gaul. The advance of Rome in this direction seems to have been checked by the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones, but through that long delay Roman influences were able to establish themselves more firmly. This part of Gaul was early and thoroughly Romanized, and part of it still keeps, in its name of Provence, the memory of its having been the first Roman province beyond the Alps. The rest of Gaul was left untouched till the great campaigns of CÆsar.

It is from CÆsar, ethnologer as well as conqueror, that we get our chief knowledge of the country as it was in his day. ?Boundaries of Transalpine Gaul.? Transalpine Gaul, as a geographical division, has well-marked boundaries in the Mediterranean, the Alps, the Rhine, the Ocean, and the Pyrenees. But this geographical division has never answered to any divisions of blood and language. ?Its three divisions, and their inhabitants, Iberian, Celtic, and German.? Gaul in CÆsar’s day, that is Gaul beyond the Roman province, formed three divisions—Aquitaine to the south-west, Celtic Gaul in the middle, and Belgic Gaul to the north-east. Aquitaine, stretching to the Garonne—the name was under Augustus extended to the Loire—was Iberian, akin to the people on the other side of the Pyrenees: a trace of its old speech remains in the small Basque district north of the Pyrenees. Celtic Gaul, from the Loire to the Seine and Marne, was the most truly Celtic land, and it was in this part of Gaul that the modern French nation took its rise. In the third division, Belgic Gaul, the tribes to the east, nearer to the Rhine, were some of them purely German, and others had been to a great extent brought under German influences or mixed with German elements. There was, in fact, no unity in Gaul beyond that which the Romans brought with them. ?Romanization of Gaul.? In seven years CÆsar subdued the whole land, and the work of assimilation began. The Roman language gradually displaced all the native languages, except where Basque and Breton survive in two corners; but in a large part of Belgic Gaul the events of later times brought the German tongue back again. ?Permanence of the ancient geography.? There is no Roman province in which, among all changes, the ancient geography has had so much effect upon that of all later times. In southern Gaul most of the cities still keep their old names with very little change. But in northern Gaul the cities have mostly taken the names of the tribes of which they were the heads. Thus Tolosa is still Toulouse; but Lutetia Parisiorum has become Paris.

The lands which we have thus gone through, Cisalpine Gaul with Liguria and Venetia, Spain, and Transalpine Gaul, form a marked division in historical geography. They are those parts of Western Europe which Rome conquered during the time of her Commonwealth, and they are those parts which have mainly kept their Roman speech to this day. But these did not make up the whole of the lands where Rome planted her Latin speech, at least for a while. The conquest of Britain belongs to the days of the Empire; but Rome, during the Commonwealth, made another conquest, which, though not in Europe, may be counted as belonging to the Western or Latin-speaking half of her dominion. This is the conquest of that part of Africa which Rome won as the result of her wars with Carthage. ?Province of Africa, B.C.146;? The only African possession won by Rome during the days of the Commonwealth was Africa in the strictest sense, the immediate dominion of Carthage. This became a province when the Punic wars were ended by the destruction of Carthage. ?of New Africa, B.C.49.? The neighbouring state of Numidia, after passing, like Carthage itself, through the intermediate state of a dependency, was made a province by CÆsar, being called New Africa, the former African province becoming the Old. ?Restoration and greatness of Carthage.? CÆsar also restored the city of Carthage as a Roman colony, and it became the chief of the Latin-speaking cities of the Empire, second only to Rome herself. But in Africa, just as in Britain, the land never became thoroughly Romanized like Gaul and Spain. The Roman tongue and laws therefore died out in both lands at the first touch of an invader, the English in one case and the Saracens in the other. The strip of fertile land between the sea on one side and the mountains and the Great Desert on the other received, first Phoenician and then Roman civilization. But neither of them could really take root there in the way that the Roman civilization took root in Gaul and Spain.

§ 4. The Eastern Provinces.

The Hadriatic Sea may be roughly taken as the boundary between the Eastern and Western parts of the Roman dominion. In the West, the Romans carried with them not only their arms, but their tongue, their laws, and their manners. They were not only conquerors but civilizers. The native Iberians and Celts adopted Roman fashions, and the isolated Greek and Phoenician cities, like Massalia and Gades, gradually became Roman also. East of the Hadriatic the state of things was quite different. Here the language and civilization of Greece had, through the conquests of the Macedonian kings, become everywhere predominant. ?Greek civilization in the East.? Greek was everywhere the polite and literary language, and a certain varnish of Greek manners had been everywhere spread. In some parts indeed it was the merest varnish; still it was everywhere strong enough to withstand the influence of Latin. Sicily and Southern Italy are the only lands which have altogether thrown away the Greek tongue, and have taken to Latin or any of the languages formed out of Latin. No part of the eastern half of the Roman dominion ever became Roman in the same way as Gaul and Spain.

The whole of the lands east of the Hadriatic may thus, as opposed to the Latin-speaking lands of the west, be called Greek-speaking lands. ?Distinctions among the Eastern provinces.? But there are some wide distinctions to be drawn among them. First, there was old Greece itself and the Greek colonies, and lands like Epeiros, which had become thoroughly Greek. Secondly, there were the kingdoms, like Macedonia in Europe and Pergamos in Asia, which had adopted the Greek speech and manners, but which did not, like Epeiros, become Greek in any political sense. Thirdly, there were a number of native states, Bithynia and others, whose kings also tried to imitate Greek ways, but naturally could not do so as thoroughly as the kings of Macedonia and Pergamos. ?Lands beyond Tauros.? Fourthly, beyond Mount Tauros lay the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, which were ruled by Macedonian kings, which contained great Greek or Macedonian cities like Antioch and Alexandria, but where there were native languages, and an old native civilization, which neither Greek nor Roman influences could ever root out. We shall see as we go on that Tauros makes a great historical boundary. The lands on this side of it really came, though very gradually, under the dominion of the Greek speech and the Roman law. Beyond Mount Tauros both the Greek and the Roman element lay merely on the surface, and therefore those lands, like Africa, easily fell away when they were attacked by the Saracens.[6] We must now go through such of the lands east of the Hadriatic as were formed into Roman provinces during the time of the Roman Commonwealth.

But again, between the Latin and the Greek parts of the Roman dominion there was a border land, namely, the lands held by the great Illyrian race. The southern parts of Illyria came within the reach of Greek influences, and it was through the affairs of Illyria that Rome was first led to meddle in the affairs of Greece. ?The kingdom of Skodra.? The use of the name Illyria is at all times very vague; as a more definite meaning as the name of a kingdom whose capital was Skodra, and which, in the second half of the third century, was a dangerous neighbour to the Greek cities and islands on that coast. ?B.C.168.? This kingdom was involved in the third Macedonian war, and came to an end at the same time. As usual, it is not easy to distinguish how much, if any, of the country actually became a Roman province, and how much was left for a while in the intermediate state of dependent alliance. But, for all practical purposes, the Illyrian kingdom of Skodra formed from this time a part of the Roman dominion. With the fall of Skodra, the parts of Illyria which lay further to the north, beyond the bounds of the Greek world, first came into notice. ?Dalmatian Wars.? The Greek colonies in Dalmatia had played their part in the first Illyrian war; but the land itself, which was to become an outlying fringe of Italy lying east of the Hadriatic, is now first heard of as a distinct country formed by a separation from the kingdom of Skodra. ?B.C.156.
B.C.34.? The first Dalmatian war soon followed; but it was not till after several wars that Dalmatia became a province, and even after that time there were several revolts. ?Roman colonies in Dalmatia.? Before long, Dalmatia was settled with several Roman colonies, as Jadera or Zara, and, above all, Salona, which became one of the chief cities of the Roman dominion. The neighbouring lands of Liburnia, Istria, and the land of the Iapodes, were gradually reduced during the same period. ?Istria incorporated with Italy.? Istria, like the neighbouring land of Venetia, was actually incorporated with Italy, and Pola, under the name of Pietas Julia, became a Roman colony.

We have already traced the process by which old Greece and the neighbouring lands of Macedonia and Epeiros gradually sank, first practically, and then formally, into parts of the Roman dominion. It would be hard to say at what particular moment many of the Greek cities and islands sank from the relation of obedient allies into that of acknowledged subjects. ?Their late formal annexation.? We have seen that some of them, as Rhodes and Byzantion, were not formally annexed till the reign of Vespasian. The Greek cities on the Euxine do not seem to have been formally annexed at all till a late period of the Eastern Empire. Other outlying Greek lands and cities became so mixed up with the history of some of the Asiatic kingdoms that they will come in for a mention along with them. ?Conquest of Crete, B.C.67,? Crete kept its independence to become a nest of pirates, and to be specially conquered. It then formed one province with the then recent conquest of KyrÊnÊ, the one great Greek settlement in Africa, which had become an appanage of the Macedonian kings of Egypt. The same had been the fate of Cyprus, an island which had always been partly Greek, and which had been further Hellenized under its Macedonian kings. ?of Cyprus, B.C.58.? Cyprus too became a province. Thus, before Rome lost her own freedom, she had become the formal or practical mistress of all the earlier abodes of freedom. Men could not yet foresee that a time would come when Greek and Roman should be words having the same meaning, and when the place and name of Rome herself should be transferred to one of the Greek cities which Vespasian formally reduced from alliance to bondage.

In Roman history one war and one conquest always led to another, and, as the affairs of Illyria had led to Roman interference in Greece, so the affairs of Greece led to Roman interference in Asia. ?B.C.191-188.? The first war which Rome waged with Antiochos of Syria led to no immediate increase of the Roman territory, but all the Seleukid possessions on this side Tauros were divided among the allies of Rome. ?Province of Asia. B.C.133-129.? This, as usual, was the first step towards the conquest of Asia, and it is quite according to the usual course of things that the first Roman province beyond the ÆgÆan, the province of Asia, was formed of the dominions of Rome’s first and most useful allies, the kings of Pergamos. The mission of Alexander and his successors, as the representatives of Western civilization against the East, now passed into the hands of Rome. Step by step, the other lands west of Tauros came under the formal or practical dominion of Rome. ?Bithynia. B.C.74.? Bithynia was the first to be annexed, and this acquisition was one of the causes which led to the second war between Rome and the famous Mithridates of Pontos. ?Overthrow of Mithridates. B.C.64.? His final overthrow brought a number of other lands under Roman dominion or influence. The Greek cities of SinÔpÊ and HÊrakleia obtained a nominal freedom, and vassal kings went on reigning in part of Pontos itself, and in the distant Greek kingdom of Bosporos. Rome was now mistress of Asia Minor. ?Lykia.? The land was divided among her provinces and her vassal kings, save that the wise federal commonwealth of Lykia still kept the highest amount of independence which was consistent with the practical supremacy of Rome.

The Mithridatic war, which made Rome mistress of Asia in the narrower sense, at once involved her in the affairs of the further East. Tigranes of Armenia had been the chief ally of Mithridates; but, though his power was utterly humbled, no Armenian province was added to the Roman dominion for a long time to come. ?Province of Syria. B.C.64.? But the remnant of the Seleukid monarchy became the Roman province of Syria. As usual, several cities and principalities were allowed to remain in various relations of alliance and dependence on the ruling commonwealth. ?Palestine.? Among these we find JudÆa and the rest of Palestine, sometimes under a Roman procurator, sometimes united under a single vassal king, sometimes parted out among various kings and tetrarchs, as suited the momentary caprice or policy of Rome. ?Comparison with British India.? In all these various relations between the native states and the ruling city we have a lively foreshadowing of the relations between England and the subject and dependent princes of India. ?Rome the champion of the West.? The conquests of Rome in these regions made her more distinctly than ever the sole representative of the West against the East, and these conquests presently brought her into collision with the one power in the known world which could at all meet her on equal terms. She had stepped into the place of Alexander and Seleukos so far as that all those parts of Alexander’s Asiatic conquests which had received even a varnish of Hellenic culture had become parts of her dominion. ?Her rivalry with Parthia.? The further East beyond the Euphrates was again under the command of a great barbarian power, that of Parthia, which had stepped into the place of Persia, as Rome had stepped into the place of Greece and Macedonia. Rome had now again a rival, in a sense from which she had not had a rival since the overthrow of Carthage and Macedonia.

One only of the Macedonian kingdoms now remained to be gathered in. ?Conquest of Egypt. B.C.31.? The annexation of Egypt, an annexation made famous by the names of Kleopatra, Antonius, the elder and the younger CÆsar, completed the work. Rome was now fully mistress of her own civilized world. Her dominion took in all the lands round the great inland sea. If, here and there, her formal dominion was broken by a city or principality whose nominal relation was that of alliance, the distinction concerned only the local affairs of that city or principality. ?Pax Romana.? Within the whole historic world of the three ancient continents, the Roman Peace had begun. Rome had still to wage wars, and even to annex provinces; but those wars and annexations were now done rather to round off and to strengthen the territory which had been already gained, than in the strictest sense to extend it.

§ 5. Conquests under the Empire.

At the same moment when the Roman commonwealth was practically changed into a monarchy, the Roman dominion was thus brought, not indeed to its greatest extent, but to an extent of which its further extension was only a natural completion. ?Conquests under Augustus and Tiberius.? There seems a certain inconsistency when we find Augustus laying down a rule against the enlargement of the Empire, while the Empire was, during his reign and that of his successor, extended in every direction. But the conquests of this time were mainly conquests for the purpose of strengthening the frontier; the occasional changes of this and that city or district from the dependent to the provincial relation, or sometimes from the provincial to the dependent, are now hardly worth mentioning. ?Incorporation of the dependent kingdoms.? Between Augustus and Nero, or, at all events, between Augustus and Vespasian, all the dependent states in Asia and Africa, such as Mauritania, Kappadokia, Lykia, and others, were finally incorporated with the Empire to which they had long been practically subject. These annexations can hardly be called conquests. And it was merely finishing a work which had been begun two hundred years before, when the small corner of Spain which still kept its independence was brought under the Roman power. ?Strengthening of the frontier.? The real conquests of this time consisted in the strengthening of the European frontier. No frontier nearer than the Rhine and the Danube could be looked on as safe. This lesson was easily learned; but it had also to be accompanied by another lesson which taught that the Rhine and the Danube, and no more distant points, were to be the real frontiers of Rome.

This brings us both to the lands which were then our own and to the lands which became our own in after times. During the reign of Augustus two conquests which most nearly concern our own history were planned, and one of them was attempted. The annexation of the land which was to become England was talked of; the annexation of the land which then was England, along with the rest of the German lands, was seriously attempted. But the conquest of Britain was put off from the days of Augustus to the days of Claudius. ?Attempted conquest of Germany. B.C.11-A.D. 9.? The attempt at the conquest of Germany, which was deemed to have been already carried out, was shivered when Arminius overthrew the legions of Varus. ?A.D.19.? The expeditions of Drusus and Germanicus into Northern Germany must have brought the Roman armies into contact with our own forefathers, for the first time, and, for several ages, for the last time. But from this time the relations between Rome and southern Germany begin, and constantly increase in importance. The two great rivers were fixed as a real frontier. ?Conquests on the Danube.? The lands between the Alps and the Danube, RÆtia, Vindelicia, Noricum, Pannonia, with Moesia on the lower Danube, were all added to the Empire during the reign of Augustus. These were strictly defensive annexations, annexations made in order to remove the dangerous frontier further from Italy. Beyond the Rhine and the Danube the Roman possessions were mere outposts held for the defence of the land between the two great streams.

Meanwhile, while the attempt of the conquest of Germany came to so little, an attempt at conquest at the other end of the world, in the Arabian peninsula, came to even less. ?Thrace.? It marks the policy of Rome and the gradual nature of her advance that, while these more distant conquests were made or attempted, Thrace still retained her dependent princes, the only land of any extent within the European dominions of Rome which did so. But Thrace, surrounded by Roman provinces, was in no way dangerous; it might remain a dependency while more distant lands were incorporated. It was not till uniformity was more sought after, till, under Vespasian, the nominal freedom of so many cities and principalities came to an end, that Thrace became a province. ?Annexation of Byzantion.? It was then that, among her latest formal acquisitions in Europe, Rome annexed the city which was, in the course of ages, to take her own place and name.

Thus, in the days between Augustus and Trajan, the conquests which Rome actually made were mainly of a defensive and strengthening character. To this rule there is one and only one exception of any importance. This is the annexation to the Roman world of the land which was looked on as another world, the conquest of the greater part of the Isle of Britain. But Britain, though it did not come under the same law as the defensive annexations of RÆtia and Pannonia, was naturally suggested by the annexation of Gaul and by the visits of the first CÆsar to the island. ?Claudius. B.C.43.? No actual conquest however took place till the reign of Claudius. ?Agricola. B.C.84.? Forty years later the Roman conquests in Britain were pushed by Agricola as far as the isthmus between the friths of Forth and Clyde, the boundary marked by the later rampart of Antoninus. But the lasting boundary of the Roman dominion in Britain cannot be looked on as reaching beyond the line of the southern wall of Hadrian, Severus, and Stilicho, between the Solway and the mouth of the Tyne. The northern part of Britain thus remained unconquered, and the conquest of Ireland was not even attempted. For us the conquest of the land which afterwards became our own has an interest above all the other conquests of Rome. But it is a purely geographical interest. The British victories of CÆsar and Agricola were won, not over our own forefathers, but over those Celtic Britons whom our forefathers more thoroughly swept away. The history of our own nation is still for some ages to be looked for by the banks of the Elbe and the Weser, not by those of the Severn and the Thames.

Britain was the last to be won of the Western provinces of Rome, and the first to be lost. Still it was, for more than three hundred years, thoroughly incorporated with the Empire, and its loss did not happen till that general break-up of the Empire of which its loss was the first stage. But between the conquest of Britain and its loss there was a short time in which Rome again extended her dominion in the old fashion, both in Europe and Asia. ?Conquests of Trajan. A.D.98-117.? This was during the reign of Trajan, when the Roman borders were again widely extended in both Europe and Asia. Under him the Danube ceased to be a boundary stream in one continent and the Euphrates in the other. ?His Asiatic and European conquests.? But a marked distinction must be drawn between his Asiatic and his European warfare. Trajan’s Asiatic conquests were strictly momentary; they were at once given up by his successor; and they will be better dealt with when we speak in another chapter of the long strife between Rome and her Eastern rival, first Parthian and then Persian. ?Conquest of Arabia PetrÆa. A.D.106.? The only lasting Asiatic conquest of Trajan’s reign was not made by Trajan himself, namely the small Roman province in Northern Arabia.

The European conquests of Trajan stand on another ground. If not strictly defensive, like those of Augustus, they might easily seem to be so. ?Dacia.? The Dacians, to the north of the lower Danube, were really threatening to the Roman power in those regions, and they had dealt Rome more than one severe blow in the days of Domitian. ?A.D.106.? Trajan now formed the lands between the Thiess and the Danube, the Dniester and the Carpathian Mountains, into the Roman province of Dacia. ?A.D.270.? The last province to be won was the first to be given up; for Aurelian withdrew from it, and transferred its name to the Moesian land immediately south of the Danube. But if Dacia was in this way one of the most short lived of Roman conquests, it was in another way one of the most lasting. ?Later history of Dacia.? Cut off, as it has been for so many ages, from all Roman influences, forming, as it has done, one of the great highways of barbarian migration, a large part of Dacia, namely the modern Rouman principality, still keeps its Roman language no less than Spain and Gaul. In one way the land is to this day more Roman than Spain or Gaul, as its people still call themselves by the Roman name. Dacia, in fact, though geographically belonging to the Eastern half of the Empire, stood in the same position as the Western provinces. Greek influences had not reached so far north, nor was there in Dacia any old-standing native civilization, such as there was in Syria and Egypt. There was therefore nothing that was at all able to hold up against Roman influences. The land was speedily and thoroughly Romanized, and it remains Roman in speech and name sixteen hundred years after the withdrawal of the Roman power.

?Summary.?

The Roman Empire was thus gradually formed by bringing, first Italy and then the whole of the Mediterranean lands, under the dominion of the one Roman city. In every part of that dominion the process of conquest was gradual. The lands which became Roman provinces passed through various stages of alliance and dependence before they were fully incorporated. But, in the end, all the civilized world of those times became Roman. Speaking roughly, three great rivers, the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, formed the European and Asiatic boundaries of the Empire. In Africa the Roman dominion consisted only of the strip of fertile land between the Mediterranean and the mountains and deserts. Britain and Dacia, the only two great provinces lying beyond this range, were the last conquered and the first given up. In Western Europe and in Africa Rome carried her language and her civilization with her, and in those lands the Roman speech still remains, except where it has been swept away by Teutonic and Saracen conquests. In the lands from the Hadriatic to Mount Tauros, which had been brought more or less under Greek influences, the Greek speech and civilization stood its ground, and in those lands Greek still survives wherever it has not been swept away by Slavonic and Turkish conquests. In the further east, in Syria and Egypt, where there was an old native civilization, neither Greek nor Roman influences took real root. The differences between these three parts of the Roman Empire, the really Roman, the Greek, and the Oriental, will be clearly seen as we go on.