agnanimous principle of Roman
statesmanship--viz., that Rome should accept from her subjects simply
military aid, and never pecuniary compensation in lieu of it--was of
a fatal importance, in comparison with which all alleviations in the
rates and the mode of levying them, as well as all exceptions in
detail, were as nothing. Such exceptions were, no doubt, made in
various cases. Messana was directly admitted to the confederacy of
the -togati-, and, like the Greek cities in Italy, furnished its
contingent to the Roman fleet. A number of other cities, while not
admitted to the Italian military confederacy, yet received in addition
to other favours immunity from tribute and tenths, so that their
position in a financial point of view was even more favourable than
that of the Italian communities. These were Segesta and Halicyae,
which were the first towns of Carthaginian Sicily that joined the
Roman alliance; Centuripa, an inland town in the east of the island,
which was destined to keep a watch over the Syracusan territory in its
neighbourhood;(9) Halaesa on the northern coast, which was the first
of the free Greek towns to join the Romans, and above all Panormus,
hitherto the capital of Carthaginian, and now destined to become
that of Roman, Sicily. The Romans thus applied to Sicily the ancient
principle of their policy, that of subdividing the dependent
communities into carefully graduated classes with different
privileges; but, on the average, the Sardinian and Sicilian
communities were not in the position of allies but in the
manifest relation of tributary subjection.

Italy and the Provinces

It is true that this thorough distinction between the communities that
furnished contingents and those that paid tribute, or at least did not
furnish contingents, was not in law necessarily coincident with the
distinction between Italy and the provinces. Transmarine communities
might belong to the Italian confederacy; the Mamertines for example
were substantially on a level with the Italian Sabellians, and there
existed no legal obstacle to the establishment even of new communities
with Latin rights in Sicily and Sardinia any more than in the country
beyond the Apennines. Communities on the mainland might be deprived
of the right of bearing arms and become tributary; this arrangement
was already the case with certain Celtic districts on the Po, and was
introduced to a considerable extent in after times. But, in reality,