Settlement as the law of growth 133 



defence and as an instrument of foreign politics, there was room for a 

 better solution of the problem than had been found in Greece or the 

 East. It was found in Italy on the following lines. An increase of 

 scale could only be attained by growth. Growth, to be effective, must 

 not consist in mere conquest: it must be true expansion, in other words 

 it must imply permanent occupation. And permanent occupation 

 implied settlement of the conquering people on the conquered lands. 

 A growing population of rustic citizens, self-supporting, bound by ties 

 of sentiment and interest to the state of which they were citizens, con- 

 scious of a duty to uphold the state to which they owed their homesteads 

 and their security, supplied automatically in response to growing needs 

 the growing raw material of power. Nor was Roman expansion confined 

 to the assignation of land-allotments to individuals (viritim). Old 

 towns were remodelled, and new ones founded, under various conditions 

 as settlements (coloniae). Each settler in one of these towns received 

 an allotment of land in the territory of the township, and was officially 

 speaking a tiller of the soil (colonus). The effect of these Colonies was 

 twofold. Their territories added to the sum of land in occupation of 

 Romans or Roman Allies: so far the gain was chiefly material. But 

 they were all bound to Rome and subjected to Roman influences. In 

 their turn they influenced the conquered peoples among whom they 

 were planted, and promoted slowly and steadily the Romanizing of 

 Italy. Being fortified, they had a military value from the first, as 

 commanding roads and as bases of campaigns. But their moral effect 

 in accustoming Italians to regard Rome as the controlling centre of 

 Italy was perhaps of even greater importance. 



We must not ignore or underrate the advantages of Rome's position 

 from a commercial point of view. Little though we hear of this in 

 tradition, it can hardly be doubted that it gave Rome a marked superi- 

 ority in resources to her less happily situated neighbours, and enabled 

 her to take the first great step forward by becoming dominant in central 

 Italy. But the consolidation and completion of her conquest of the 

 peninsula was carried out by means of an extended Roman agriculture. 

 It was this that gave to Roman expansion the solid character that 

 distinguished republican Rome from other conquering powers. What 

 she took, that she could keep. When the traditional story of early 

 Rome depicts the Roman commons as hungry for land, and annexation 

 of territory as the normal result of conquest, it is undoubtedly worthy 

 of belief. When it shews us the devastation of their enemies' lands as 

 a chief part sometimes the whole of the work of a campaign, it is in 

 full agreement with the traditions of all ancient warfare. When we 

 read 1 that the ruin of farms by raids of the enemy brought suffering 



1 Livy II 23 etc. 



