to the hands of the Romans by the force of
circumstances without intention on their part to acquire it.

Out of Italy

The immediate results of the war out of Italy were, the conversion
of Spain into two Roman provinces--which, however, were in perpetual
insurrection; the union of the hitherto dependent kingdom of Syracuse
with the Roman province of Sicily; the establishment of a Roman
instead of a Carthaginian protectorate over the most important
Numidian chiefs; and lastly the conversion of Carthage from a powerful
commercial state into a defenceless mercantile town. In other words,
it established the uncontested hegemony of Rome over the western
region of the Mediterranean. Moreover, in its further development,
it led to that necessary contact and interaction between the state
systems of the east and the west, which the first Punic war had
only foreshadowed; and thereby gave rise to the proximate decisive
interference of Rome in the conflicts of the Alexandrine monarchies.

In Italy

As to its results in Italy, first of all the Celts were now certainly,
if they had not been already beforehand, destined to destruction; and
the execution of the doom was only a question of time. Within the
Roman confederacy the effect of the war was to bring into more
distinct prominence the ruling Latin nation, whose internal union
had been tried and attested by the peril which, notwithstanding
isolated instances of wavering, it had surmounted on the whole in
faithful fellowship; and to depress still further the non-Latin or
non-Latinized Italians, particularly the Etruscans and the Sabellians
of Lower Italy. The heaviest punishment or rather vengeance was
inflicted partly on the most powerful, partly on those who were at
once the earliest and latest, allies of Hannibal--the community of
Capua, and the land of the Bruttians. The Capuan constitution was
abolished, and Capua was reduced from the second city into the first
village of Italy; it was even proposed to raze the city and level
it with the ground. The whole soil, with the exception of a few
possessions of foreigners or of Campanians well disposed towards Rome,
was declared by the senate to be public domain, and was thereafter
parcelled out to small occupiers on temporary lease. The Picentes on
the Silarus were similarly treated; their capital was razed, and the
inhabitants were dispersed among the surrounding villages. The doom
of the Bruttians was still more severe