Roman Supremacy in the West and in the East 169

Senate ordered that the city should be burned and that its site should be plowed up and dedicated to the infernal gods.. Such was the end of the most formidable rival Rome ever met in her career of conquest.1

Sicily

The two European countries, Sicily and Spain, which Rome had taken from Carthage, presented to the conqueror very different problems. Sicily had been long accustomed to foreign masters. Its civilized and peaceloving inhabitants were as ready to accept Roman rule as, in the past, they had accepted the rule of Greeks and Carthaginians. Every year the island became more and more a part of Italy and of Rome.

Spain

Spain, on the contrary, gave the Romans some hard fighting. The wild Spanish tribes loved their liberty, and in their mountain fastnesses long kept up a desperate struggle for independence. It was not until the Romans sent Scipio Æmilianus to Spain that the Spanish resistance was finally overcome (133 B.C.).

All Spain, except the inaccessible mountain district in the northwest, now became Roman territory. Many colonists settled there; traders and speculators flocked to Romanizathe seaports; even the legionaries, quartered in tion of Spain Spain for long periods, married Spanish wives and, on retiring from active service, made their homes in the peninsula. Rome thus continued in Spain the process of Romanization which she had begun in Italy. She was to repeat this process in Gaul and Britain. Her way was prepared by the sword; but after the sword came civilization.

While Rome was subduing the West, she was also extending her influence over the highly civilized peoples of the East. Roman interference in the affairs of Macedonia Rome and found an excuse in the attempt of that country, Macedonia during the Second Punic War, to give aid to Hannibal. It

1 In 29 B.C., one hundred and seventeen years after the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Punic wars, a new town was founded near the old site by the emperor Augustus. It became in time the third city of the Roman Empire. It was destroyed by the Arabs in 698 A.D.

See page 158.

3 See pages 184 and 197.

was a fateful moment when, for the second time, the legion faced the phalanx. The easy victory over Macedonia showed that this Hellenistic kingdom was no match for the Italian republic. Macedonia was finally made into a subject state or province of Rome. Thus disappeared a great power, which Philip had founded and which Alexander had led to the conquest of the world.

Rome and
Greece

Having subdued Macedonia, Rome proclaimed Greece a free state. But this "freedom" really meant subjection, as was amply proved when some of the Greek cities rose in revolt against Roman domination. The heavy hand of Roman vengeance especially descended on Corinth, at this time one of the most beautiful cities of the world. In 146 B.C., the same year in which the destruction of Carthage occurred, Corinth was sacked and burned to the ground. The fall of Corinth may be said to mark the final extinction of Greek liberty. Though the Hellenic cities and states were allowed to

1 Corinth offered too good a site to remain long in ruins. Resettled in 46 B.C. as a Roman colony, it soon became one of the great cities in the empire. It was to the Corinthians that St. Paul wrote two of his Epistles.

rule themselves, they paid tribute and thus acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. A century later, Greece became in name, as well as in fact, a province of the Roman Empire.1

Rome, in the meantime, was drawn into a conflict with the kingdom of Syria. That Asiatic power proved to be no more capable than Macedonia of checking the Roman Rome and advance. The Syrian king had to give up the Syria greater part of his possessions in Asia Minor. The western part of the peninsula, together with the Greek cities on the coast, was formed in 133 B.C. into the province of Asia. Thus the same year that witnessed the complete establishment of Roman rule in Spain saw Rome gain her first possessions at the opposite end of the Mediterranean.

Roman supremacy over the Mediterranean world was now all but complete. In 264 B.C. Rome had been only one of the five great Mediterranean states. In 133 B.C no other Political situpower existed to match its strength with that of ation in 133 Rome. To her had fallen in the West the heritage of Carthage, in the East the heritage of Alexander. Rome had built up this mighty empire at a terrible cost in blood and treasure. Let us see what use she was to make of it.

B.C.

Creation of

system

59. The Mediterranean World under Roman Rule Rome's dealings with the new dependencies across the sea did not follow the methods that had proved so successful in Italy. The Italian peoples had been treated with great liberality. Rome regarded them as allies, the provincial exempted them from certain taxes, and in many instances gave them Roman citizenship. It did not seem possible to extend this wise policy to remote and often barbarous lands beyond the borders of Italy. Rome adopted, instead, much the same system of imperial rule that had been previously followed by Persia and by Athens. She treated the foreign

1 The Greeks were not again a free people until the nineteenth century of our era. In 1821 A.D. they rose against their Turkish masters in a glorious struggle for liberty. Eight years later the powers of Europe forced the Sultan to recognize the freedom of Greece. That country then became an independent kingdom, with its capital at Athens. See pages 39-40 and 104.