since 487 distributed throughout Italy did not, formally at least, restrict the consular authority, for in Italy, just as in Rome, they were regarded simply as auxiliary magistrates dependent on the consuls.  This mode of administration appears to have been at first extended also to the territories taken from Carthage, and Sicily and Sardinia to have been governed for some years by quaestors under the superintendence of the consuls; but the Romans must very soon have become practically convinced that it was indispensable to have superior magistrates specially appointed for the transmarine regions.  As they had been obliged to abandon the concentration of the Roman jurisdiction in the person of the praetor as the community became enlarged, and to send to the more remote districts deputy judges,(4) so now (527) the concentration of administrative and military power in the person of the consuls had to be abandoned.  For each of the new transmarine regions—­viz.  Sicily, and Sardinia with Corsica annexed to it—­there was appointed a special auxiliary consul, who was in rank and title inferior to the consul and equal to the praetor, but otherwise was—­like the consul in earlier times before the praetorship was instituted—­in his own sphere of action at once commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme judge.  The direct administration of finance alone was withheld from these new chief magistrates, as from the first it had been withheld from the consuls;(5) one or more quaestors were assigned to them, who were in every way indeed subordinate to them, and were their assistants in the administration of justice and in command, but yet had specially to manage the finances and to render account of their administration to the senate after having laid down their office.

Organization of the Provinces
-Commercium-
Property
Autonomy

This difference in the supreme administrative power was the essential distinction between the transmarine and continental possessions.  The principles on which Rome had organized the dependent lands in Italy, were in great part transferred also to the extra-Italian possessions.  As a matter of course, these communities without exception lost independence in their external relations.  As to internal intercourse, no provincial could thenceforth acquire valid property in the province out of the bounds of his own community, or perhaps even conclude a valid marriage.  On the other hand the Roman government allowed, at least to the Sicilian towns which they had not to fear, a certain federative organization, and probably even general Siceliot diets with a harmless right of petition and complaint.(6) In monetary arrangements it was not indeed practicable at once to declare the Roman currency to be the only valid tender in the islands; but it seems from the first to have obtained legal circulation, and in like manner, at least as a rule, the right of coining in precious metals seems to have been withdrawn from the cities in Roman Sicily.(7)