(516). In this instance, even more than in the affair of the Mamertines, the Romans were justly liable to the reproach that the great and victorious burgesses had not disdained to fraternize and share the spoil with a venal pack of mercenaries, and had not sufficient self-denial to prefer the course enjoined by justice and by honour to the gain of the moment. The Carthaginians, whose troubles reached their height just about the period of the occupation of Sardinia, were silent for the time being as to the unwarrantable violence; but, after this peril had been, contrary to the expectations and probably contrary to the hopes of the Romans, averted by the genius of Hamilcar, and Carthage had been reinstated to her full sovereignty in Africa (517), Carthaginian envoys immediately appeared at Rome to require the restitution of Sardinia. But the Romans, not inclined to restore their booty, replied with frivolous or at any rate irrelevant complaints as to all sorts of injuries which they alleged that the Carthaginians had inflicted on the Roman traders, and hastened to declare war[2]; the principle, that in politics power is the measure of right, appeared in its naked effrontery. Just resentment urged the Carthaginians to accept that offer of war; had Catulus insisted upon the cession of Sardinia five years before, the war would probably have pursued its course. But now, when both islands were lost, when Libya was in a ferment, and when the state was weakened to the utmost by its twenty-four years' struggle with Rome and the dreadful civil war that had raged for nearly five years more, they were obliged to submit It was only after repeated entreaties, and after the Phoenicians had bound themselves to pay to Rome a compensation of 1200 talents (292,000 pounds) for the warlike preparations which had been wantonly occasioned, that the Romans reluctantly desisted from war. Thus the Romans acquired Sardinia almost without a struggle; to which they added Corsica, the ancient possession of the Etruscans, where perhaps some detached Roman garrisons still remained over from the last war[3]. In Sardinia, however, and still more in the rugged Corsica, the Romans restricted themselves, just as the Phoenicians had done, to an occupation of the coasts. With the natives in the interior they were continually engaged in war or, to speak more correctly, in hunting them like wild beasts; they baited them with dogs, and carried what they captured to the slave market; but they undertook no real conquest. They had occupied the islands not on their own account, but for the security of Italy. Now that the confederacy possessed the three large islands, it might call the Tyrrhene Sea its own.
The acquisition of the islands in the western sea of Italy introduced into the state administration of Rome a distinction, which to all appearance originated in mere considerations of convenience and almost accidentally, but nevertheless came to be of the deepest importance for all time following - the distinction between the continental and transmarine forms of administration, or to use the appellations afterwards current, the distinction between Italy and the provinces. Hitherto the two chief magistrates of the community, the consuls, had not had any legally defined sphere of action; on the contrary their official field extended as far as the Roman government itself. Of course, however, in practice they made a division of functions between them, and of course also they were bound in every particular department of their duties by the enactments existing in regard to it; the jurisdiction, for instance, over Roman citizens had in every case to be left to the praetor, and in the Latin and other autonomous communities the existing treaties had to be respected. The four quaestors who had been since 487 distributed throughout Italy did not, formally at least, restrict the consular authority, for in Italy, just as in Rome, they were regarded simply as auxiliary magistrates dependent on the consuls. This mode of administration appears to have been at first extended also to the territories taken from Carthage, and Sicily and Sardinia to have been governed for some years by quaestors under the superintendence of the consuls; but the Romans must very soon have become practically convinced that it was indispensable to have superior magistrates specially appointed for the transmarine regions. As they had been obliged to abandon the concentration of the Roman jurisdiction in the person of the praetor as the community became enlarged, and to send to the more remote districts deputy judges[4], so now (527) the concentration of administrative and military power in the person of the consuls had to be abandoned. For each of the new transmarine regions - viz. Sicily, and Sardinia with Corsica annexed to it - there was appointed a special auxiliary consul, who was in rank and title inferior to the consul and equal to the praetor, but otherwise was - like the consul in earlier times before the praetorship was instituted - in his own sphere of action at once commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme judge. The direct administration of finance alone was withheld from these new chief magistrates, as from the first it had been withheld from the consuls[5]; one or more quaestors were assigned to them, who were in every way indeed subordinate to them, and were their assistants in the administration of justice and in command, but yet had specially to manage the finances and to render account of their administration to the senate after having laid down their office.
This difference in the supreme administrative power was the essential distinction between the transmarine and continental possessions. The principles on which Rome had organized the dependent lands in Italy, were in great part transferred also to the extra-Italian possessions. As a matter of course, these communities without exception lost independence in their external relations. As to internal intercourse, no provincial could thenceforth acquire valid property in the province out of the bounds of his own community, or perhaps even conclude a valid marriage. On the other hand the Roman government allowed, at least to the Sicilian towns which they had not to fear, a certain federative organization, and probably even general Siceliot diets with a harmless right of petition and complaint[6]. In monetary arrangements it was not indeed practicable at once to declare the Roman currency to be the only valid tender in the islands; but it seems from the first to have obtained legal circulation, and in like manner, at least as a rule, the right of coining in precious metals seems to have been withdrawn from the cities in Roman Sicily[7]. On the other hand not only was the landed property in all Sicily left untouched - the principle, that the land out of Italy fell by right of war to the Romans as private property, was still unknown to this century - but all the Sicilian and Sardinian communities retained self-administration and some sort of autonomy, which indeed was not assured to them in a way legally binding, but was provisionally allowed. If the democratic constitutions of the communities were everywhere set aside, and in every city the power was transferred to the hands of a council representing the civic aristocracy; and if moreover the Sicilian communities, at least, were required to institute a general valuation corresponding to the Roman census every fifth year; both these measures were only the necessary sequel of subordination to the Roman senate, which in reality could not govern with Greek
But, side by side with this essential equality of rights, there was established a distinction, very important in its effects, between the Italian communities on the one hand and the transmarine communities on the other. While the treaties concluded with the Italian towns imposed on them a fixed contingent for the army or the fleet of the Romans, such a contingent was not imposed on the transmarine communities, with which no binding paction was entered into at all, but they lost the right of arms[8], with the single exception that they might be employed on the summons of the Roman praetor for the defence of their own homes. The Roman government regularly sent Italian troops, of the strength which it had fixed, to the islands; in return for this, a tenth of the field-produce of Sicily, and a toll of 5 per cent on the value of all articles of commerce exported from or imported into the Sicilian harbours, were paid to Rome. To the islanders these taxes were nothing new. The imposts levied by the Persian great-king and the Carthaginian republic were substantially of the same character with that tenth; and in Greece also such a taxation had for long been, after Oriental precedent, associated with the
