proved to be the strongest." The loosely
compacted alliance of the Italic states withstood all the efforts of
Hannibal to rend it asunder. The Roman system, in fact, created a double
patriotism, that which attached itself to the locality, and that which
broadened out into devotion to the metropolis. Neither was the one
allegiance destructive of the other. When Ennius made his famous boast
he did not mean that he spurned Rudiae and that he would for the future
look exclusively to Rome as his mother-country, but rather that both the
smaller and the larger patriotism would continue to exist side by side.
"English local life," it has been truly said, "was the source and
safeguard of English liberty."[100] It may be said with equal truth that
the notion of constituting self-governing town communities as the basis
of Empire, which, Mr. Reid tells us, "was deeply ingrained in the Roman
consciousness," stood Rome in good stead during some of the most stormy
periods of her history. The process of voluntary Romanisation was so
speedy that the natives of any province which, to use the Roman
expression, had been but recently "pacated," became in a very short time
loyal and zealous Roman subjects, and rarely if ever took advantage of
distress elsewhere to vindicate their independence by seeking to cast
off the light shackles which had been imposed on them.

"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