It is beyond the scope of this work to trace provincial towns through all their various grades, and their evolution in the hands of Roman statesmanship from the time of Augustus. What we are chiefly concerned with is the spirit and the rapid development of that brilliant civic life, which not only covered the worlds both of East and West with material monuments of Roman energy, but profoundly influenced for good, or sometimes for evil, the popular character. The magical transformation wrought by Roman rule in a century and a half seized the imagination of contemporaries such as the rhetor Aristides. And the mere wreck of that brilliant civilisation which now meets the traveller’s eye, in regions that have long returned to waste, will not permit us to treat his eulogy of Rome as only a piece of rhetoric. Regions, once desert solitudes, are thickly dotted with flourishing cities; the Empire is a realm of cities. The world has laid the sword aside, and keeps universal festival, with all pomp and gladness. All other feuds and rivalries are gone, and cities now vie with one another only in their splendour and their pleasures. Every space is crowded with porticoes, gymnasia, temple fronts, with studios and schools.(1131) Sandy wastes, trackless mountains, and broad rivers present no barriers to the traveller, who finds his home and country everywhere. The earth has become a vast pleasure garden.(1132) This glowing description of the Roman world of the Antonine age is not perhaps strengthened by the appeal to the doubtful statistics of other contemporaries, such as Aelian and Josephus. We may hesitate to accept the statement that Italy had once 1197 cities, or that Gaul possessed 1200.(1133) In these estimates, if they have any solid foundation, the term “city” must be taken in a very elastic sense. But there are other more trustworthy reckonings which sufficiently support the glowing description of Aristides. When the Romans conquered Spain and Gaul, they found a system of _pagi_ or cantons, with very few considerable towns. The 800 towns which are said to have been taken by Julius Caesar can have been little more than villages. But the Romanisation of both countries meant centralisation. Where the Romans did not find towns they created them.(1134) Gradually, but rapidly, the isolated rural life became more social and urban. In the north-eastern province of Spain, out of 293 communities in the time of the elder Pliny, 179 were in some sense urban, 114 were still purely rustic;(1135) and we may be sure that this is an immense advance on the condition of the country at the time of the conquest. In the reign of Antoninus Pius, only 27 of these rural districts remained without an organised civic centre.(1136) In Gaul, Julius Caesar impressed the stamp of Rome on the province of Narbo, by founding cities of the Roman type, and his policy was continued by Augustus. The loose cantonal system almost disappeared from the province in the south,