Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/341

XI in the second to his provincial command; but viewed constitutionally his magistracy was precisely the same during both years. Thus the ancient imperium of the City-State was found to be sufficient for all purposes of government, whether in Rome, Italy, or beyond the sea.

Secondly, wherever the Romans found City-States in the countries they subdued, they retained them together with their local institutions; modifying these so far as they deemed it advisable, but rarely putting fresh ones in their place. This was their policy in Italy, in Sicily, in Greece, in Asia, wherever in fact the city-community had flourished in any form. Occasionally indeed they destroyed a city, as they wantonly destroyed Corinth; and sometimes they might deprive it of all real self-government, as they degraded Capua after the Hannibalic war. But for the most part, both as matter of convenience and policy, they let the local magistrates and councils continue to administer the local laws. Even in those provinces where the City-State had never really existed, as in North Italy and in Spain, they did all that could be done to initiate city-life on the model of their own. Like Alexander, they began the foundation of cities by drawing the native population together into new centres; and as time went on, colonies of the full Roman, as well as of the inferior Latin franchise, each a miniature Rome, with its own magistrates and Senate, began to appear even in the transmarine