The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦Her early Latin dominion.♦

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.

♦Eastern and Western Provinces.♦

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.

♦Sicily.♦

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 Phœnician colonies, a battle-field of Aryan and Semitic races in the days of the Mahometan conquests.

♦Sardinia and Corsica.♦

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.