The first point to make quite sure of is that this life was in the main a life in towns. Roman policy had always favoured the maintenance of existing towns, except in the very rare cases where they were deemed too dangerous. Carthage and Corinth had been destroyed by Rome on this pretext, but they had been founded afresh by Julius Cæsar, and were now beginning a long and vigorous city life. In the East, where city-states abounded, Rome retained and adorned them, or built new ones, as Pompey did after crushing Mithradates and Tigranes. In the West, in Gaul and Spain, where they did not exist at all, she founded some, and by a wonderfully wise policy favoured the natural growth of others. The people of these western provinces lived chiefly in some kind of villages, scattered over a district which we may call a canton, often, perhaps, as big as an English county of to-day. The Roman policy was either to found a city to serve as the centre of the canton, and to endow it with magistrates and senate on the Roman model: or to give the canton its senate and magistrates, and leave it to develop its own town-centre. This policy shows extremely well the genius of Rome for civilising, or Romanising, without destroying the grouping and the habits of the people to be civilised, or Romanised. The old tribal (or cantonal) system remained, and its officers were the chiefs of the old population; but they now bore Roman names, _duoviri_, _quæstores_, and so on, and sat in an assembly called _ordo_—i.e. senate. If a town were not founded at once, in which the business of the canton could be carried on, it was certain to grow of itself. A purely rural region, where the people live in villages only, was contrary to Roman interests and traditions; it was inconvenient for raising taxes, and it did not give those opportunities of culture and amusement which the Roman looked for when he travelled or settled in a province. The provincials, too, were in this way made more happy and contented; town life greatly helped in civilising them, attracting the better or richer people from the villages.