ABSTRACT
By collecting so many countries which had once been independent and separate states under her political dominion, Rome had not altered the natural laws to which they were subject. By giving all these countries a single, though clastic, administrative organization, she had not changed the nature of the soil or the conformation of the land or the climate. After the victorious city had done her political and administrative work, agriculture, stock-breeding, hunting, and fishing, in other words the flora and fauna, were determined by the same old geographical conditions as before. The crops grown and the animals reared continued to be, for the most part, those characteristic of the Mediterranean region, with those which belonged rather to the Atlantic type in Western and Central Europe and those related to the tropical or desert type in the east and south.
