shame that
while we are boasting up ourselves above all others, we should yet be
so far from imitating such examples as these, that we do not so much as
understand that if government be the parent of manners, where there are
no heroic virtues, there is no heroic government.

"But the Macedonians rebelling, at the name of a false Philip, the third
time against the Romans, were by them judged incapable of liberty, and
reduced by Metellus to a province.

"Now whereas it remains that I explain the nature of a province, I shall
rather choose that of Sicily, because, having been the first which the
Romans made, the descriptions of the rest relate to it.

"'We have so received the Sicilian cities into amity,' says Cicero,
'that they enjoy their ancient laws; and upon no other condition than of
the same obedience to the people of Rome, which they formerly yielded to
their own princes or superiors.' So the Sicilians, whereas they had been
parcelled out to divers princes, and into divers states (the cause of
perpetual wars, whereby, hewing one another down, they became sacrifices
to the ambition of their neighbors, or of some invader), were now
received at the old rate into a new protection which could hold them,
and in which no enemy durst touch them; nor was it possible, as the
case then stood, for the Sicilians to receive, or for the Romans to give
more.

"A Roman province is defined by Sigonius as a region having provincial
right. Provincial right in general was to be governed by a Roman
praetor, or consul, in matters at least of state, and of the militia;
and by a quaeStor, whose office it was to receive the public revenue.
Provincial right in particular was different, according to the different
leagues or agreements between the commonwealth, and the people reduced
into a province. 'Siculi hoc jure sunt, ut quod civis cum cive agat,
domi certet suis legibus; quod siculus cum siculo non ejusdem civitatis,
ut de eo proetor judices, ex P. Rupilii decreto, sortiatur. Quod
privatus a populo petit, aut populus a privato, senatus ex aliqua
civitate, qui judicet, datur, cui alternoe civitates rejectoe sunt. Quod
vivis Romanus a siculo petit, siculus judex datur quod siculus a cive
Romano, civis Romanus datur. Coeterarum rerum selecti judices ex civium
Romanorum conventu proponi solent. Inter aratores et decumanos lege
frumentaria, quam Hieronicam appellant, judicia fiunt.' Because the
rest would oblige me to a discourse too larg