And first let us observe that the Romans—­strict disciplinarians and great lawyers as they were—­never sought to impose upon the subject provinces any uniformity.  They never sought, any more than Great Britain has sought, to erect one code of law, one form of administration, one standard of rights, one rate of taxation, one religion, and to make it equally applicable to Spain and Britain, Greece and Africa, Gaul and Asia Minor.  There were, of course, common to all the empire certain rules essential to civilisation, certain natural laws and laws of all nations.  Murder, violence, robbery, deliberate sacrilege, and so forth were punishable everywhere, though not necessarily by the same authority nor in the same manner.  Necessarily it was held everywhere that contracts must be fulfilled and debts paid.  Beyond the fact that Rome demanded peace and order and the essentials of civilised life, and provided machinery to secure those ends, she troubled little about differences of local procedure and varieties of local law, so long as the Roman rule was duly recognised and the Roman taxes duly paid.  As with Great Britain, her care was for results, not for machinery, or, as the great Roman historian puts it, she “valued the reality of the empire, not the show.”

Outside Italy there spread the provinces.  These had been conquered or peacefully annexed at various times.  A number of small states had come in by perpetual alliance.  Some provinces, such as Gaul, had formerly been divided among tribes and tribal chiefs.  Some, such as Greece, had consisted of highly civilised city-communities with small territories and managing their own affairs, although they might all alike be acknowledging the suzerainty of some powerful prince.  Some, such as Cappadocia, Syria, and Egypt, had been under their native kings.  Judaea was a peculiar example of a small theocratic state, in which the chief power lay with the priests.

Rome was too wise to meddle more than she need with existing conditions.  She preferred as far as possible to accept the existing machinery and to use it, with only necessary modifications, as her instrument of administration.  To the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, for example, she conceded a large criminal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical offenders, so long as that jurisdiction did not limit the universal rights of a “Roman citizen.”

When a province was conquered, all its territory became technically the property of the Roman state.  Some of it was kept as such, and mines of gold, silver, lead, iron, and salt, or quarries of marble, granite, and gravel, were commonly annexed as state property.  If it was expedient to allot some portion of the conquered land to a Roman settlement—­commonly a settlement of veteran soldiers called a “colony”—­that was done.  Such a settlement meant the founding of a town, to which was granted a certain environment of land.  Those who took part in its formation were “Roman citizens” and forfeited no