ABSTRACT
After the Second Punic War Rome had to face the challenge of the barbarian, as well as of the civilized, world. Cisalpine Gaul must be recovered, subdued and secured. In Spain the natives must be driven back to render the Roman occupation safe; having wrested the Peninsula from Carthage, the Romans no more thought of giving it back to the natives than the Allies after the First World War thought of letting German colonial possessions revert to a native administration. Yet Rome had not entered on a systematic career of conquest; perhaps it would have been better for the native populations if she had. Distracted by eastern affairs and exhausted by the Hannibalic War, she only fought as need arose. A systematic conquest, followed up by the spreading of Roman civilization, could have been accomplished in a few years. Instead, slow wars dragged on interminably, often with little plan, under mediocre or ambitious generals; useless cruelty and great losses were endured by both sides, until at length a semblance of order was imposed. Although the final settlement of these barbarian tribes was only completed by Augustus the peacemaker, yet in the fifty years which followed the Hannibalic War Rome had asserted her suzerainty, not only in Corsica, Sardinia and the highlands of central Spain, but also on her northern frontier from near Marseilles, along the sweep of the Alps to Istria and thence down the western coast of the Balkan peninsula.
