In the main, then, we have, outside Italy, two very distinct halves of the Roman world:  the Eastern, with its large cities, its active civic life, its high culture, its contributions to science, art, and luxury—­and, it must be added, its general dissoluteness—­with here and there its pronounced leanings to Oriental fanaticism; and the Western, with very few large towns, with a life more determined by clans and tribes or country districts, with comparatively little social culture, contributing almost nothing to art or science, stronger in its contribution of natural products and virile men than in those of the more refined or artificial luxury.  Over this half the Roman tongue, Roman dress, and Roman manners spread rapidly.  In it Roman settlers made themselves more at home.  The aim of the better classes of the natives was to render themselves as Roman as possible.  It is in the western part of the empire that you will find the names which mark systematic Roman settlement and which often denote the work of an emperor.  Towns such as Saragossa (Caesarea Augusta), Aosta, Augsburg, Autun (Augustodunum), and Augst are foundations of Augustus.  Hence the fact that Spain and Prance speak a Latin tongue at this day, while no Latin was ever even temporarily the recognised language between the southern Adriatic and the Euphrates.

This prime division made, let us now pass quickly round the empire, making such brief observations as may appear most helpful as we go.

In the year 64 the south of Spain, the province of Baetica—­of which we may speak more familiarly as Andalusia—­was prosperous and peaceful, almost completely romanized and latinized.  Many of its inhabitants were true Latins, most had made themselves indistinguishable from Latins.  Along the river Guadalquivir there were flourishing towns, chief among them being those now known as Seville and Cordova.  The whole region was one of rich pasture and tillage, and from it the merchant ships from Cadiz brought to Rome cargoes of the finest wool and of excellent olives and other fruits.  The east of Spain, with Tarragona for its capital, stood next in order for its settled life and steady produce, including wine, salt fish and sauces, while in the interior the finest steel—­corresponding to the Bilbao blades of more modern history—­was tempered in the cold streams of the hills above the sources of the Tagus.  From Portugal came cochineal and olives.  In several parts of the peninsula—­in Portugal, in the Asturias, and near Cartagena—­were mines of gold and silver, which had been worked by the old Phoenicians and which the Romans had reopened.  The chief trouble of Spain, it may be interesting to learn, was the rabbits, and against these there were no guns and no poison, but only dogs, traps, and ferrets.  In Gaul there is one province long-established and fully romanized, with its capital at Narbonne, and with flourishing Roman towns, which are now familiar under such names as Aries and Nimes.  This is