18. BRYCE: THE EXTENSION OF LAW 577 world of rules and doctrines that had grown up in a small city. //. The Diffusion of Roman Law by Conquest The first conquests of Rome were made in Italy. They did not, however, involve any legal changes, for conquest meant merely the reduction of what had been an independent city or group of cities or tribes to vassalage, with the obliga- tion of sending troops to serve in the Roman armies. Local autonomy was not (as a rule) interfered with; and such autonomy included civil jurisdiction, so the Italic and Greco- Italic cities continued to be governed by their own laws, which in the case at least of Oscan and Umbrian communities usually resembled that of Rome, and which of course tended to become assimilated to it even before Roman citizenship was extended to the Italian allies. With the annexation of part of Sicily in a. d. 230 the first provincial government was set up, and the legal and administrative problems which Rome had to deal with began to show themselves. Other provinces were added in pretty rapid succession, the last being Britain (invaded under Claudius in a. d. 43). Now although In all these provinces the Romans had to maintain order, to collect revenue and to dispense justice, the condi- tions under which these things, and especially the dispensing of justice, had to be done differed much In different prov- inces. Some, such as Sicily, Achala, Macedonia and the provinces of Western Asia Minor, as well as Africa (I. e. such parts of that province as Carthage had permeated), were civilized countries, where law-courts already existed In the cities.^ The laws had doubtless almost everywhere been created by custom, for the so-called Codes we hear of in Greek cities were often rather in the nature of political constitutions and penal enactments than summarized state- ments of the whole private law; yet in some cities the cus- toms had been so summarized.^ Other provinces, such as
- Cicero says of Cicily, " Siculi hoc inre sunt ut quod civis cum civc
agat, domi certet suis legibus; quod Siculus cum Siculo non eiusdem civitntis, ut de eo praetor iudices sortiatur." In Verrem, ii. 13, 32.
- The laws of Gortyn in Crete, recently published from an inscrip-
tion discovered there, apparently of about 500 b. c, are a remarkably
