CHAPTER III

A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE PROVINCES

After thus considering, however incompletely, the manner in which the people of the Roman world contrived to move about within the empire itself, we may proceed to glance at the constituent parts of the world in which they thus travelled to and fro.

And first we must draw a distinction of the highest importance between the western and eastern halves.  Naturally enough, Italy itself was before all others the land of the Romans.  It was the favoured land, enjoyed the fullest privileges, and was the most completely romanized in population, manners, and sentiment.  Besides its larger and smaller romanized towns—­of which there were about 1200—­it was dotted from end to end with the country-seats and pleasure resorts of Romans.  North and west of Italy were various peoples, differing widely in character, habits, and religion, as well as in physique.  East of it were various other peoples differing also from each other in such respects, but for the most part marked by a common civilisation in which the West had but an almost inconsiderable share.  Before the Roman conquest the nations and tribes of the West had been in general rude, unlettered, and unorganised.  Except here and there in Spain, where the Phoenicians or Carthaginians had been at work, and in the Greek colonies sprung from Marseilles, they had hardly possessed such a thing as a town.  They scarcely knew what was meant by civic life, with its material luxuries and graces, its art and literature.  They were commonly small peoples without unity, brave fighters, but, in all those matters commonly classed as civilisation, distinctly behind the times.  The superiority of the Roman in these parts was not merely one of organised strength, military skill, and political method, it was a superiority also of intellectual life and culture.  In Spain, Gaul, Britain, Switzerland, the Tyrol and southern Austria, and also in North-West Africa, the Roman proceeded to organise after his own heart, to settle his colonies, to impose his language, and to inculcate his ideals.  He was dealing with inferiors; this he fully recognised, and so for the most part did they.

Meanwhile to the eastward also Rome spread her conquests.  Here, however, she was dealing with peoples who had already passed under influences in many respects superior to those brought by the conqueror, influences which were in a sense only beginning to educate the conqueror himself.  Let us here, for the sake of clearness, make a brief digression into previous history.