customs, language, and religion of the conquerors were introduced
everywhere, and the peninsula became rapidly Romanized.




CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LAST CENTURY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC.
(133-31 B.C.)


We have now traced the growth of the power of republican Rome, as through
two centuries and more of conquest she has extended her authority, first
throughout Italy, and then over almost all the countries that border upon
the Mediterranean. It must be our less pleasant task now to follow the
declining fortunes of the republic through the last century of its
existence. We shall here learn that wars waged for spoils and dominion are
in the end more ruinous, if possible, to the conqueror than to the
conquered.

THE SERVILE WAR IN SICILY (134-132 B.C.).--With the opening of this period
we find a terrible struggle going on in Sicily between masters and slaves
--or what is known as "The First Servile War." The condition of affairs in
that island was the legitimate result of the Roman system of slavery. The
captives taken in war were usually sold into servitude. The great number
of prisoners furnished by the numerous conquests of the Romans caused
slaves to become a drug in the slave-markets of the Roman world. They were
so cheap that masters found it more profitable to wear their slaves out by
a few years of unmercifully hard labor, and then to buy others, than to