orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and
far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by
the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets
of Corinth. And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality
of any single individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure
deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate. We shall not err,
if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus
early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy
proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial
rival. If the great merchants of Rome had anything to say in the
regulation of Greece, we can understand why Corinth was singled out for
punishment, and why the Romans not only destroyed the city as it stood,
but also prohibited any future settlement on a site so pre-eminently
favourable for commerce. The Peloponnesian Argos thenceforth became
the rendezvous for the Roman merchants, who were very numerous even
in Greece. For the Roman wholesale traffic, however, Delos was
of greater importance; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had
attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes,(26) and now
in a similar way entered on the heritage of Corinth. This island
remained for a considerable time the chief emporium for merchandise
going from the east to the west.(27)

In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion
exhibited a development more imperfect than in the African and
Macedono-Hellenic countries, which were separated from Italy
only by narrow seas.

Kingdom of Pergamus

In Asia Minor, after the Seleucids were driven back, the kingdom