like their critics, the means of profitting by the experience of ages which were still unborn. At the beginning of the second century B.C. the actual possessions of Rome were small indeed compared with what they were at its ending. When the century opened, Rome was the undoubted head of the West; it was by no means clear that she was ever to become head of the East as well. To rule that so she was to be was the work of that all-important and neglected age. At its beginning, Rome was head of Italy; she was winning back the dominion in Cisalpine Gaul which the Hannibalian war had cost her; but she had no provinces of her own separate winning; she had only the lands in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain which she had taken over from Carthage, lands which in Spain at least needed frequent hard fighting to enlarge or even to keep. In Transalpine Gaul she had as yet no possessions; Massalia was still an independent and specially cherished ally. In Africa Carthage was an unwilling dependency; Massinissa of Numidia was a faithful and zealous vassal king, to be favoured and strengthened as long as Carthage was allowed to live. In Eastern Europe Rome had indeed begun her dominion beyond Hadria, a dominion as yet over allies and not over acknowledged subjects. But it was a dominion which did not stretch beyond certain points of coast immediately opposite to the Italian peninsula. Rome had appeared as a destroyer in more than one island and city in the heart of Greece; but she had done her work of havoc in fellowship with Greek allies, and, if she had shown herself at all in Greek warfare, it was only because Philip had chosen to be the ally of Hannibal, but not to be his ally in such a sort as to strike at Rome on her own ground. In the further East Pergamon was already the ally of Rome; Attalos and Eumenês were to be as Massinissa so long as either Macedonia or the Seleukid power needed watching on behalf of Rome. The Seleukid power was as yet neither friend nor enemy; Egypt was bound to Rome by a friendship of some standing, but friendship had not as yet brought dependence with it.