time became
the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal
language of cultivated intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the
Alps to the Sicilian Straits. But it no longer restricted itself
to these natural limits. The mass of capital accumulating in
Italy, the riches of its products, the intelligence of its
agriculturists, the versatility of its merchants, found no adequate
scope in the peninsula; these circumstances and the public service
carried the Italians in great numbers to the provinces.(1) Their
privileged position there rendered the Roman language and the Roman
law privileged also, even where Romans were not merely transacting
business with each other.(2) Everywhere the Italians kept together
as compact and organized masses, the soldiers in their legions, the
merchants of every larger town as special corporations, the Roman
burgesses domiciled or sojourning in the particular provincial
court-district as "circuits" (-conventus civium Romanorum-) with
their own list of jurymen and in some measure with a communal
constitution; and, though these provincial Romans ordinarily
returned sooner or later to Italy, they nevertheless gradually
laid the foundations of a fixed population in the provinces,
partly Roman, partly mixed, attaching itself to the Roman settlers.
We have already mentioned that it was in Spain, where the Roman army
first became a standing one, that distinct provincial towns with
Italian constitution were first organized--Carteia in 583,(3)
Valentia in 616,(4) and at a later date Palma and Pollentia.(5)
Although the interior was still far from civilized,--the territory
of the Vaccaeans, for instance, being still mentioned long after
this time as one of the rudest and most repulsive places of abode
for the cultivated Italian--authors and inscriptions attest that as
early as the middle of the seventh century the Latin language was
in common use around New Carthage and elsewhere along the coast.
Gracchus first distinctly developed the idea of colonizing, or in
other words of Romanizing, the provinces of the Roman state by
Italian emigration, and endeavoured to carry it out; and, although
the conservative opposition resisted the bold project, destroyed
for the most part its attempted beginnings, and prevented its
continuation, yet the colony of Narbo was preserved, important even
of itself as extending the domain of the Latin tongue, and far more
important still as the landmar