The Roman Empire was thus gradually formed by bringing, first Italy and then the whole of the Mediterranean lands, under the dominion of the one Roman city. In every part of that dominion the process of conquest was gradual. The lands which became Roman provinces passed through various stages of alliance and dependence before they were fully incorporated. But, in the end, all the civilized world of those times became Roman. Speaking roughly, three great rivers, the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, formed the European and Asiatic boundaries of the Empire. In Africa the Roman dominion consisted only of the strip of fertile land between the Mediterranean and the mountains and deserts. Britain and Dacia, the only two great provinces lying beyond this range, were the last conquered and the first given up. In Western Europe and in Africa Rome carried her language and her civilization with her, and in those lands the Roman speech still remains, except where it has been swept away by Teutonic and Saracen conquests. In the lands from the Hadriatic to Mount Tauros, which had been brought more or less under Greek influences, the Greek speech and civilization stood its ground, and in those lands Greek still survives wherever it has not been swept away by Slavonic and Turkish conquests. In the further east, in Syria and Egypt, where there was an old native civilization, neither Greek nor Roman influences took real root. The differences between these three parts of the Roman Empire, the really Roman, the Greek, and the Oriental, will be clearly seen as we go on. FOOTNOTES: [4] We shall come as we go on to two uses of the name in which Italy, oddly enough, meant only the northern part of the land commonly so called. But in both these cases the name had a purely political and technical meaning, and it never came into common use in this sense. [5] Some may think that the Cisalpine Gauls ought to be excepted, as the common Roman story represents them as having crossed the Alps from Transalpine Gaul at a time which almost comes within the range of contemporary history. But this is a point about which there is no real certainty; and it seems quite as likely that the Gaulish settlements on the Italian side of the Alps were as old as those on the other side. [6] In a more minute study of the history it will be found that Latin Africa held out against the Saracens very much longer than Syria and Egypt. But for our purpose the two may be classed together in opposition to those lands in Europe and Asia which always remained Roman or Greek. CHAPTER IV. THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. § 1. _The Later Geography of the Empire._