As we go on with the geography of other countries which came under the Roman dominion, we shall learn more of the way in which Rome thus enlarged her territories bit by bit. But it seemed right to begin with the geography of Greece, and this could not be carried down to the time when Greece became a Roman dominion without saying something of the Roman conquest. From B.C. 146 we must look upon Greece and the neighbouring lands as being, some of them formally and all of them practically, part of the Roman dominion. And we shall not have to speak of them again as separate states or countries till many ages later, when the Roman dominion began to fall in pieces. Having thus traced the geography of the most eastern of the three great European peninsulas down to the time when it became part of the dominion which took in all the lands around the Mediterranean, we will now go on to speak of the middle peninsula, which became the centre of that dominion, namely that of Italy. ♦Special character of Greek history.♦ Greece and the neighbouring lands are the only parts of Europe which can be said to have a history quite independent of Rome, and beginning earlier than the Roman history. Of the other countries therefore which became part of the Roman Empire it will be best to speak in their relation to Italy, and, as nearly as possible, in the order in which they came under the Roman power. FOOTNOTES: [2] See the first chapter of his eighth book (vol. ii. p. 139 of the Tauchnitz edition). He makes four peninsulas within peninsulas, beginning from the south with Peloponnêsos, and he enlarges on the general character of the country as made up of gulfs and promontories. [3] Ἤπειρος is simply the mainland, and came only gradually to mean a particular country. We may compare the use of ‘terra firma’ in South America. In the catalogue (_Iliad_, ii. 620-635), after the island subjects of Odysseus have been reckoned up, we read: οἵ τ᾽ Ἤπειρον ἔχον, ἠδ᾽ ἀντιπέραι᾽ ἐνέμοντο. This must mean the land afterwards called Akarnania. It was remarked at a later time that the Akarnanians were the only people of Greece who did not appear in the catalogue. CHAPTER III. FORMATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.