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 ( 188). Meanwhile they had been engaged in suppressing various movements among the Ligurians, Boians, Istrians, and other nations in the north of Italy, as well as among the Spanish tribes and the savages of Sardinia. A declaration of hostilities by Perseus, the successor of Philip in Macedonia, in conjunction with Genthius, king of Illyria, led to another war against these countries, which terminated in their complete subjugation ( 168). The next twenty years were spent in securing these conquests, and in establishing relations, virtually those of sovereignty, with various states of Asia Minor, such as Bithynia and Rhodes; and with various others of Africa, as Egypt and Numidia. The whole circuit of the Mediterranean in their power, and their ships respected in all its ports, as belonging to the 'sovereign people of Italy,' the Romans at length executed their long-cherished project, and pounced upon Carthage ( 149), whose existence, even in its fallen condition of a mere commercial capital, they could not tolerate. Hannibal had been dead more than thirty years; but under such generals as they had, the wretched Carthaginians offered a desperate resistance to the Roman commanders. After a horrible siege, the city, containing a population of 700,000, was taken and sacked by Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son of the son of the great Scipio ( 146). The houses were razed to the ground, and the province of Africa was the prize of this third 'Punic war.' The fall of Greece was cotemporary with that of Carthage. The Achaian League, a confederacy of cities in Greece proper and the Peloponnesus, showing a disposition to be independent of the Romans, provoked their vengeance; and the destruction of Corinth in the same year as that of Carthage extinguished the last sparks of liberty in Greece. The whole of the Greek countries were parceled out into Roman provinces, and from that time Greeks became the slave teachers of the Romans, their secretaries, their sycophants, their household wits. Yet out of Greece thus ruined there afterwards arose many great spirits; for no degradation, no series of misfortunes, could eradicate the wondrous intellect which lurked in the fine Greek organization. The last scene in this long series of wars was enacted in Spain, where, roused by a noble patriot called Viriathus—the Wallace of that day—the native tribes had revolted against the Romans. The fate of Spain, however, was sealed by the destruction of Numantia by Scipio Æmilianus ( 133).

By the wars of 130 years which we have thus enumerated, the following countries had become subject to Rome:—Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the smaller islands of the Mediterranean; Macedonia; Illyricum, with Thessaly and Epirus; Greece, including Greece proper and the Peloponnesus; Spain; and the whole northern coast of Africa. The Romans had likewise established their influence in Asia. The conquered countries were divided into provinces, so that the designation for the Roman dominion became 'Italy and the Provinces.' The provinces received each an organization at the time of its formation, according to its circumstances. Retaining their national habits, religion, laws, etc., the inhabitants of every province were governed by a military president, sent from Rome, with a staff of officials. Unlike the Italic nations, who furnished only subsidies of men to the sovereign states, the provincials were required to pay taxes in money and kind; and these taxes, were farmed out by the censors—Roman citizens, who, under the name of Publicans, settled in the various districts of the provinces, and proved a great scourge by their avarice and rapacity.