es
during the earlier Empire by establishing time-expired soldiers--men who
spoke Latin and who were citizens of Rome[1]--in provincial
municipalities (_coloniae_). It allured provincials themselves to adopt
Roman civilization by granting the franchise and other privileges to
those who conformed. Neither step need be ascribed to any idealism on
the part of the rulers. _Coloniae_ served as instruments of repression
as well as of culture, at least in the first century of the Empire. When
Cicero[2] describes a _colonia_, founded under the Republic in southern
Gaul, as 'a watch-tower of the Roman people and an outpost planted to
confront the Gaulish tribes', he states an aspect of such a town which
obtained during the earlier Empire no less than in the Republican age.
Civilized men, again, are always more easily ruled than savages.[3] But
the result was in any case the same. The provincials became Romanized.

[Footnote 1: English writers sometimes adduce the provincial origins of
the soldiers as proofs that they were unromanized. The conclusion is
unjustifiable. The legionaries were throughout recruited from places
which were adequately Romanized. The auxiliaries, though recruited from
less civilized districts, and though to some extent tribally organized
in the early Empire, were denationalized after A.D. 70, and non-Roman
elements do not begin to recur in the army till later. Tiberius _militem
Graece testimonium interrogatum nisi Latine respondere vetuit_ (Suet.
_Tib._ 71).]

[Footnote 2: Cic. _pro Font._ 13. Compare Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 27 and
32, _Agr._ 14 and 32.]

[Footnote 3: Tacitus emphasizes this point. _Agr._ 21 _ut homines
dispersi ac rudes, eoque in bella faciles, quieti et otio per voluptates
adsuescerent, hortari privatim adiuvare publice ut templa fora domos
exstruerent.... Idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars
servitutis esset._]

No less important results followed from unofficial causes. The legionary
fortresses collected settlers--traders, women, veterans--under the
shelter of their ramparts, and their _canabae_ or 'bazaars', to use an
Anglo-Indian term, formed centres of Roman speech and life, and often
developed into cities. Italians, especially of the upper-middle class,
merchants and others,[1] emigrated freely and formed tiny Roman
settlements, often in districts where no troops were stationed. Chances
opened at Rome for able provincials who became Romanized. Above all, the
definite