ABSTRACT
The successive cessions of Sicily (241), Sardinia and Corsica (237) by Carthage, on the one hand, and the victorious campaign in Illyria (229-228), on the other, had raised a serious new problem for Rome—that of the organization of her domain outside Italy. The unification of Italy had been followed by the conquest of the Mediterranean basin. How would the Roman State—and it alone, for the Italic federation, whatever its part in the conquest of these lands, had no voice in their organization—proceed to solve this problem? Once more the Roman genius, practical and realistic as it was, did not turn to any pretty abstract theories, but to its practical experience of men and affairs for solutions. These solutions were discovered almost simultaneously during the fourteen years intervening between the end of the First Punic War (241) and the definite organization of Sicily and Sardinia (about 227). During this brief period Rome laid the foundations and fixed the principles of an administrative system which was to govern the Mediterranean world for more than six centuries. She devised the system of provinces and the system of protectorates, two parallel schemes, two complementary ideas.
