Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/293

Rh they lost the right to maintain an army or to go to war, in fact to have any foreign policy.

The kingdom of Syracuse came to an end after the capture of the city by Marcellus in B.C. 214, and was added to the rest of the island as one Roman province. This is the permanent subjection of another once important and flourishing portion of Hellas, preceded, if not caused, by a long series of intestine disorders and appeals for outside help as in Greece itself. It is a kind of epitome of Greek history. It is difficult to decide exactly what the effect of the Roman occupation was. The cities retained much of Hellenic habits and aspect, and in spite of the immense robberies of Marcellus and others, many works of Greek art as well as the stately temples which beautified them. But besides large districts—such as the Leontine plain—which were made ager publicus, the lands fell for the most part into the hands of Roman speculators who worked them by slave labour. The slaves were in many cases the Sicilians themselves, Greek by origin, whose fathers, at any rate, had once owned the lands on which they laboured. Others, perhaps, were imported from Africa or the East. The stewards and agents of the Italian landowners no doubt found the country pleasant enough, but those Greeks who retained property and freedom had much to suffer at the hands of corrupt governors and oppressive tax-collectors. The miserable state of the slaves again was shown by the two dreadful servile wars of B.C. 134 and 103. Its history, however, henceforth follows that of Rome rather than of Greece.