rded the extra-Italian conquests either as simply a necessary
evil, or as a fiscal possession virtually beyond the pale
of the state. It is the imperishable glory of the Roman democracy
or monarchy--for the two coincide--to have correctly apprehended
and vigorously realized this its highest destination. What
the irresistible force of circumstances had paved the way for,
through the senate establishing against its will the foundations
of the future Roman dominion in the west as in the east; what thereafter
the Roman emigration to the provinces--which came as a public
calamity, no doubt, but also in the western regions at any rate
as a pioneer of a higher culture--pursued as matter of instinct;
the creator of the Roman democracy, Gaius Gracchus, grasped
and began to carry out with statesmanlike clearness and decision.
The two fundamental ideas of the new policy--to reunite
the territories under the power of Rome, so far as they were Hellenic,
and to colonize them, so far as they were not Hellenic--had already
in the Gracchan age been practically recognized by the annexation
of the kingdom of Attalus and by the Transalpine conquests of Flaccus:
but the prevailing reaction once more arrested their application.
The Roman state remained a chaotic mass of countries without thorough
occupation and without proper limits. Spain and the Graeco-Asiatic
possessions were separated from the mother country by wide
territories, of which barely the borders along the coast
were subject to the Romans; on the north coast of Africa the domains
of Carthage and Cyrene alone were occupied like oases; large tracts
even of the subject territory, especially in Spain, were but nominally
subject to the Romans. Absolutely nothing was done on the part
of the government towards concentrating and rounding off
their dominion, and the decay of the fleet seemed at length
to dissolve the last bond of connection between the distant
possessions. The democracy no doubt attempted, so soon as it
again raised its head, to shape its external policy in the spirit
of Gracchus--Marius in particular cherished such ideas--but as it
did not for any length of time attain the helm, its projects
were left unfulfilled. It was not till the democracy practically took
in hand the government on the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
in 684, that a revolution in this respect occurred. First of all
their sovereignty on the Mediterranean was restored--the most
vital ques