was overthrown. The long war had put to the proof the solid
qualities of her citizens and the merits of her Italian policy, and
they had stood the test. A larger policy was henceforth inevitable.
But Roman statesmen still acted, and long continued to act, as if
Rome were simply and necessarily an Italian power. Conquests
abroad were 'departments' (provinciae) under governors invested
with both civil and military authority. The whole of her present
Provinces had fallen to her by the accident of her struggle with
Carthage. That Carthage might not reoccupy Spain and the
islands, Rome must keep them. So, in spite of imperfect con-
quest, she was the paramount power in the western Mediterranean,
where no local powers existed able to defy her. But the rise of
Rome was not a matter of indifference to the eastern powers, and
the condition of the East was wholly unlike that of the West.
We shall see that in her eastern conquests Rome had to deal
with peoples more advanced in civilization, and accustomed to
forms of government which Roman statesmen did not understand.
Rome in short was not trained for the new imperial duties that
came upon her as the sequel of the second Punic war. We now
enter upon a story of blundering, most of it due to sheer ignor-
ance and the defects of her own republican constitution, destined
to inflict needless misery for many years upon millions of the
human race.

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