The Hadriatic Sea may be roughly taken as the boundary between the Eastern and Western parts of the Roman dominion. In the West, the Romans carried with them not only their arms, but their tongue, their laws, and their manners. They were not only conquerors but civilizers. The native Iberians and Celts adopted Roman fashions, and the isolated Greek and Phœnician cities, like Massalia and Gades, gradually became Roman also. East of the Hadriatic the state of things was quite different. Here the language and civilization of Greece had, through the conquests of the Macedonian kings, become everywhere predominant. ♦Greek civilization in the East.♦ Greek was everywhere the polite and literary language, and a certain varnish of Greek manners had been everywhere spread. In some parts indeed it was the merest varnish; still it was everywhere strong enough to withstand the influence of Latin. Sicily and Southern Italy are the only lands which have altogether thrown away the Greek tongue, and have taken to Latin or any of the languages formed out of Latin. No part of the eastern half of the Roman dominion ever became Roman in the same way as Gaul and Spain. The whole of the lands east of the Hadriatic may thus, as opposed to the Latin-speaking lands of the west, be called Greek-speaking lands. ♦Distinctions among the Eastern provinces.♦ But there are some wide distinctions to be drawn among them. First, there was old Greece itself and the Greek colonies, and lands like _Epeiros_, which had become thoroughly Greek. Secondly, there were the kingdoms, like _Macedonia_ in Europe and _Pergamos_ in Asia, which had adopted the Greek speech and manners, but which did not, like Epeiros, become Greek in any political sense. Thirdly, there were a number of native states, _Bithynia_ and others, whose kings also tried to imitate Greek ways, but naturally could not do so as thoroughly as the kings of Macedonia and Pergamos. ♦Lands beyond Tauros.♦ Fourthly, beyond Mount Tauros lay the kingdoms of _Syria_ and _Egypt_, which were ruled by Macedonian kings, which contained great Greek or Macedonian cities like _Antioch_ and _Alexandria_, but where there were native languages, and an old native civilization, which neither Greek nor Roman influences could ever root out. We shall see as we go on that Tauros makes a great historical boundary. The lands on this side of it really came, though very gradually, under the dominion of the Greek speech and the Roman law. Beyond Mount Tauros both the Greek and the Roman element lay merely on the surface, and therefore those lands, like Africa, easily fell away when they were attacked by the Saracens.[6] We must now go through such of the lands east of the Hadriatic as were formed into Roman provinces during the time of the Roman Commonwealth. ♦The Illyrian Provinces.♦