preparations which had been wantonly occasioned, that the Romans
reluctantly desisted from war. Thus the Romans acquired Sardinia
almost without a struggle; to which they added Corsica, the ancient
possession of the Etruscans, where perhaps some detached Roman
garrisons still remained over from the last war.(3) In Sardinia,
however, and still more in the rugged Corsica, the Romans restricted
themselves, just as the Phoenicians had done, to an occupation of
the coasts. With the natives in the interior they were continually
engaged in war or, to speak more correctly, in hunting them like wild
beasts; they baited them with dogs, and carried what they captured to
the slave market; but they undertook no real conquest. They had
occupied the islands not on their own account, but for the security
of Italy. Now that the confederacy possessed the three large islands,
it might call the Tyrrhene Sea its own.

Method of Administration in the Transmarine Possessions
Provincial Praetors

The acquisition of the islands in the western sea of Italy introduced
into the state administration of Rome a distinction, which to all
appearance originated in mere considerations of convenience and almost
accidentally, but nevertheless came to be of the deepest importance
for all time following--the distinction between the continental and
transmarine forms of administration, or to use the appellations
afterwards current, the distinction between Italy and the provinces.
Hitherto the two chief magistrates of the community, the consuls, had
not had any legally defined sphere of action; on the contrary their
official field extended as far as the Roman government itself. Of
course, however, in practice they made a division of functions
between them, and of course also they were bound in every particular