hitherto the capital of Carthaginian, and now destined to become
that of Roman, Sicily. The Romans thus applied to Sicily the ancient
principle of their policy, that of subdividing the dependent
communities into carefully graduated classes with different
privileges; but, on the average, the Sardinian and Sicilian
communities were not in the position of allies but in the
manifest relation of tributary subjection.

Italy and the Provinces

It is true that this thorough distinction between the communities that
furnished contingents and those that paid tribute, or at least did not
furnish contingents, was not in law necessarily coincident with the
distinction between Italy and the provinces. Transmarine communities
might belong to the Italian confederacy; the Mamertines for example
were substantially on a level with the Italian Sabellians, and there
existed no legal obstacle to the establishment even of new communities
with Latin rights in Sicily and Sardinia any more than in the country
beyond the Apennines. Communities on the mainland might be deprived
of the right of bearing arms and become tributary; this arrangement
was already the case with certain Celtic districts on the Po, and was
introduced to a considerable extent in after times. But, in reality,
the communities that furnished contingents just as decidedly
preponderated on the mainland as the tributary communities in the
islands; and while Italian settlements were not contemplated on the
part of the Romans either in Sicily with its Hellenic civilization or
in Sardinia, the Roman government had beyond doubt already determined
not only to subdue the barbarian land between the Apennines and the
Alps, but also, as their conquests advanced, to establish in it
new communities of Italic origin and Italic rights. Thus their