ad devastated the lands and islands
from the Hellespont to the Pillars of Hercules for seventeen years.
Before this war the policy of the Romans had no higher aim than to
acquire command of the mainland of the Italian peninsula within its
natural boundaries, and of the Italian islands and seas; it is clearly
proved by their treatment of Africa on the conclusion of peace that
they also terminated the war with the impression, not that they
had laid the foundation of sovereignty over the states of the
Mediterranean or of the so-called universal empire, but that they had
rendered a dangerous rival innocuous and had given to Italy agreeable
neighbours. It is true doubtless that other results of the war, the
conquest of Spain in particular, little accorded with such an idea;
but their very successes led them beyond their proper design, and it
may in fact be affirmed that the Romans came into possession of Spain
accidentally. The Romans achieved the sovereignty of Italy, because
they strove for it; the hegemony--and the sovereignty which grew out
of it--over the territories of the Mediterranean was to a certain
extent thrown into 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