“So long as municipal liberty maintained its vigour, the empire flourished.”  This is the fundamental fact to be borne in mind in dealing with the history of Roman expansion.  Mr. Reid then takes us, step by step and province by province, through the pitiful history of subsequent deterioration and decay.  After the Hannibalic war, Roman hegemony in Italy began to pass into domination.  A policy of unwise exclusion applied to the federated states and cities, coupled with the assertion of irritating privileges on behalf of Roman citizens, led to the cataclysm of the Great Social War, at the close of which burgess rights were reluctantly conceded to all Italic communities who had not joined the rebels.  Then followed the era of the great Julius, who probably—­though of this we cannot be quite certain—­wished to create a “world-state” with Rome as its head; Augustus, to whose genius and administrative ability tardy justice is now being done, and who, albeit he continued the policy of his uncle, possibly leant rather more to the idea, realised eighteen centuries later by Cavour, of a united Italy; Adrian, who aimed above all things at the consolidation of the Empire; and many others.  Consolidation in whatsoever form almost necessarily connoted the insistence on some degree of uniformity, and “when the Emperors pressed uniformity upon the imperial system, it rapidly went to pieces.”  Finally, we get to the stage of Imperial penury and extravagance, accompanied by centralisation in extremis, when “hordes of official locusts, military and civil,” were let loose on the land, and the tax-gatherers destroyed the main sources of the public revenues, with the result that the tax-payers were utterly ruined.  The municipal system possessed wonderful vitality, and displayed remarkable aptitude for offering a passive resistance to the attacks directed against it.  It survived longer than might have been expected.  But when it became clear that the only function which the curiales were expected to perform was to emulate the Danaides by pouring gold into the bottomless cask of the Imperial Treasury,[101] they naturally rejected the dubious honours conferred on them, and fled either to be the companions of the monks in the desert or elsewhere so as to be safe from the crushing load of Imperial distinction.  Mr. Hodgkin and others have pointed out that the diversion of local funds to the Imperial Exchequer was one of the proximate causes which led to the downfall of the empire.  Whilst the municipal system lasted, it produced admirable results.  Dealing with Northern Africa, whose progress was eventually arrested by the withering hand of Islam, Mr. Reid speaks of “the contrast between the Roman civilisation and the culture which exists in the same regions to-day; flourishing cities, villages, and farms abounded in districts which are now sterile and deserted.”