By virtue of the law, that a people which has grown into a state absorbs its neighbours who are in political nonage, and a civilized people absorbs its neighbours who are in intellectual nonage-- by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid and as much a law of nature as the law of gravity--the Italian nation (the only one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political development and a superior civilization, though it presented the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the east which were ripe for destruction, and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades of culture in the west--Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans--by means of its settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled, and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian countries with the impress of its nationality. The Roman aristocracy had accomplished the preliminary condition required for this task-- the union of Italy; the task itself it never solved, but always regarded 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 question for a state like that of Rome. Towards the east, moreover, the boundary of the Euphrates was secured by the annexation of the provinces of Pontus and Syria. But there still remained beyond the Alps the task of at once rounding off the Roman territory towards the north and west, and of gaining a fresh virgin soil there for Hellenic civilization and for the yet unbroken vigour of the Italic race.
Historical Significance Of The Conquests Of Caesar
This task Gaius Caesar undertook. It is more than an error, it is an outrage upon the sacred spirit dominant in history, to regard Gaul solely as the parade ground on which Caesar exercised himself and his legions for the impending civil war. Though the subjugation of the west was for Caesar so far a means to an end that he laid the foundations of his later height of power in the Transalpine wars, it is the especial privilege of a statesman of genius that his means themselves are ends in their turn. Caesar needed no doubt for his party aims a military power, but he did not conquer Gaul as a partisan. There was a direct political necessity for Rome to meet the perpetually threatened invasion of the Germans thus early beyond the Alps, and to construct a rampart there which should secure the peace of the Roman world. But even this important object was not the highest and ultimate reason for which Gaul was conquered by Caesar. When the old home had become too narrow for the Roman burgesses and they were in danger of decay, the senate's policy of Italian conquest saved them from ruin. Now the Italian home had become in its turn too narrow; once more the state languished under the same social evils repeating themselves in similar fashion only on a greater scale. It was a brilliant idea, a grand hope, which led Caesar over the Alps--the idea and the confident expectation that he should gain there for his fellow- burgesses a new boundless home, and regenerate the state a second time by placing it on a broader basis.
Caesar In Spain
The campaign which Caesar undertook in 693 in Further Spain, may be in some sense included among the enterprises which aimed at the subjugation of the west. Long as Spain had obeyed the Romans, its western shore had remained substantially independent of them even after the expedition of Decimus Brutus against the Callaeci(1), and they had not even set foot on the northern coast; while the predatory raids, to which the subject provinces found themselves continually exposed from those quarters, did no small injury to the civilization and Romanizing of Spain.