His land had
become part of a new province, it is true, but provided he did not
interest himself in such matters as peace and war, not only was he
free to manage his own affairs, but that land, were it at the
uttermost end of the earth, might, in recompense of his fidelity,
come to be regarded as within the Italian territory; as such,
sacred, inviolate, free from taxes, and he a citizen of Rome,
senator even, emperor!
Conquest once solidified, the rest was easy. Tattered furs were
replaced by the tunic and uncouth idioms by the niceties of Latin
speech. In some cases, where the speech had been beaten in with
the hilt of the sword, the accent was apt to be rough, but a
generation, two at most, and there were sweethearts and swains
quoting Horace in the moonlight, naively unaware that only the
verse of the Greeks could pleasure the Roman ear.
The principalities and kingdoms that of their own wish [a wish
often suggested, and not always amicably either] became allies of
Rome and mingled their freedom with hers, entered into an alliance
whereby in return for Rome's patronage and protection they agreed
to have a proper regard for the dignity of the Roman people and to
have no other friends or enemies than those that were Rome's--a
formula exquisite in the civility with which it exacted the
renunciation of every inherent right. A king wrote to the senate:
"I have obeyed your deputy as I would have obeyed a god.
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