Grain was not furnished in their case except for compensation, and even then the governor might not levy more than a twentieth; besides, conformably to the just- mentioned ordinance of the supreme authority, he was bound to adjust the compensation in an equitable manner. On the other hand, the obligation of the Spanish subjects to furnish contingents to the Roman armies had an importance very different from that which belonged to it at least in peaceful Sicily, and it was strictly regulated in the several treaties. The right, too, of coining silver money of the Roman standard appears to have been very frequently conceded to the Spanish towns, and the monopoly of coining seems to have been by no means asserted here by the Roman government with the same strictness as in Sicily. Rome had too much need of her subjects everywhere in Spain, not to proceed with all possible tenderness in the introduction and handling of the provincial constitution there. Among the communities specially favoured by Rome were the great cities along the coast of Greek, Phoenician, or Roman foundation, such as Saguntum, Gades, and Tarraco, which, as the natural pillars of the Roman rule in the peninsula, were admitted to alliance with Rome. On the whole, Spain was in a military as well as financial point of view a burden rather than a gain to the Roman commonwealth; and the question naturally occurs, Why did the Roman government, whose policy at that time evidently did not contemplate the acquisition of countries beyond the sea, not rid itself of these troublesome possessions? The not inconsiderable commercial connections of Spain, her important iron- mines, and her still more important silver-mines famous from ancient times even in the far east(5)--which Rome, like Carthage, took into her own hands, and the management of which was specially regulated by Marcus Cato (559)--must beyond doubt have co-operated to induce its retention; but the chief reason of the Romans for retaining the peninsula in their own immediate possession was, that there were no states in that quarter of similar character to the Massiliot republic in the land of the Celts and the Numidian kingdom in Libya, and that thus they could not abandon Spain without putting it into the power of any adventurer to revive the Spanish empire of the Barcides.
Notes For Chapter VII
1. According to the account of Strabo these Italian Boii were driven by the Romans over the Alps, and from them proceeded that Boian settlement in what is now Hungary about Stein am Anger and Oedenburg, which was attacked and annihilated in the time of Augustus by the Getae who crossed the Danube, but which bequeathed to this district the name of the Boian desert. This account is far from agreeing with the well-attested representation of the Roman annals, according to which the Romans were content with the cession of half the territory; and, in order to explain the disappearance of the Italian Boii, we have really no need to assume a violent expulsion--the other Celtic peoples, although visited to a far less extent by war and colonization, disappeared not much less rapidly and totally from the ranks of the Italian nations. On the other hand, other accounts suggest the derivation of those Boii on the Neusiedler See from the main stock of the nation, which formerly had its seat in Bavaria and Bohemia before Germanic tribes pushed it towards the south. But it is altogether very doubtful whether the Boii, whom we find near Bordeaux, on the Po, and in Bohemia, were really scattered branches of one stock, or whether this is not an instance of mere similarity of name. The hypothesis of Strabo may have rested on nothing else than an inference from the similarity of name--an inference such as the ancients drew, often without due reason, in the case of the Cimbri, Veneti, and others.
2. III. I. Libyphoenicians
3. III. VI. Gades Becomes Roman
4. Of this praetor there has recently come to light the following decree on a copper tablet found in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar and now preserved in the Paris Museum: "L. Aimilius, son of Lucius, Imperator, has ordained that the slaves of the Hastenses [of Hasta regia, not far from Jerez de la Frontera], who dwell in the tower of Lascuta [known by means of coins and Plin. iii. i, 15, but uncertain as to site] should be free. The ground and the township, of which they are at the time in possession, they shall continue to possess and hold, so long as it shall please the people and senate of the Romans. Done in camp on 12 Jan. [564 or 565]." (-L. Aimilius L. f. inpeirator decreivit utei qui Hastensium servei in turri Lascutana habitarent, leiberei essent, Agrum oppidumqu[e], guod ea tempestate posedissent, item possidere habereque ioussit, dum poplus senatusque Romanus vettet. Act. in castreis a. d. XII. k. Febr.-) This is the oldest Roman document which we possess in the original, drawn up three years earlier than the well-known edict of the consuls of the year 568 in the affair of the Bacchanalia.
5. 1 Maccab. viii. 3. "And Judas heard what the Romans had done to the land of Hispania to become masters of the silver and gold mines there."
Chapter VIII
The Eastern States And The Second Macedonian War
The Hellenic East
The work, which Alexander king of Macedonia had begun a century before the Romans acquired their first footing in the territory which he had called his own, had in the course of time--while adhering substantially to the great fundamental idea of Hellenizing the east --changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Hellene- Asiatic states. The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly held what the king had won; and under the protection of the -sarissae-, Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere throughout the ancient empire of the Achaemenidae. The officers, who divided the heritage of the great general, gradually settled their differences, and a system of equilibrium was established, of which the very Oscillations manifest some sort of regularity.