so as to avoid
the dangerous circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus and to make
the whole traffic between Italy and Asia pass through the Corintho-
Saronic gulf. Lastly even in the remote Hellenic east the monarch
called into existence Italian settlements; on the Black Sea,
for instance, at Heraclea and Sinope, which towns the Italian
colonists shared, as in the case of Emporiae, with the old inhabitants;
on the Syrian coast, in the important port of Berytus,
which like Sinope obtained an Italian constitution; and even in Egypt,
where a Roman station was established on the lighthouse-island
commanding the harbour of Alexandria.

Extension of the Italian Municipal Constitution to the Provinces

Through these ordinances the Italian municipal freedom was carried
into the provinces in a manner far more comprehensive than had been
previously the case. The communities of full burgesses--that is,
all the towns of the Cisalpine province and the burgess-colonies
and burgess-municipia--scattered in Transalpine Gaul and elsewhere--
were on an equal footing with the Italian, in so far as they administered
their own affairs, and even exercised a certainly limited jurisdiction;
while on the other hand the more important processes came before
the Roman authorities competent to deal with them--as a rule the governor
of the province.(98) The formally autonomous Latin and the other
emancipated communities-thus including all those of Sicily
and of Narbonese Gaul, so far as they were not burgess-communities,
and a considerable number also in the other provinces--had not merely
free administration, but probably unlimited jurisdiction; so that
the governor was only entitled to interfere there by virtue of his--
certainly very arbitrary--administrative control. No doubt even earlier
there had been communities of full burgesses within the provinces
of governors, such as Aquileia, and Narbo, and whole governors'
provinces, such as Cisalpine Gaul, had consisted of communities
with Italian constitution; but it was, if not in law, at least
in a political point of view a singularly important innovation,
that there was now a province which as well as Italy was peopled
solely by Roman burgesses,(99) and that others promised to become such.

Italy and the Provinces Reduced to One Level

With this disappeared the first great practical distinction
that separated Italy from the provinces; and the second--that ordinarily
no troops were stationed