They seized all the islands in that division of the sea, or at any
rate prevented any other nation from settling in Corsica, Sardinia,
and the Balearic Isles. In particular Carthage took possession
of the western part of Sicily, which had been settled by sister
Phoenician colonies. While Rome did everything in its power to
consolidate its conquests by admitting the other Italians to some
share in the central government, Carthage only regarded its foreign
possessions as so many openings for trade. In fact, it dealt with
the western littoral of the Mediterranean something like the East
India Company treated the coast of Hindostan: it established factories
at convenient spots. But just as the East India Company found it
necessary to conquer the neighbouring territory in order to secure
peaceful trade, so Carthage extended its conquests all down the
western coast of Africa and the south-east part of Spain, while Rome
was extending into Italy. To continue our conchological analogy, by
the time of the first Punic War Rome and Carthage had each expanded
into a shell, and between the two intervened the eastern section of
the island of Sicily. As the result of this, Rome became master
of Sicily, and then the final struggle took place with Hannibal in
the second Punic War, which resulted in Rome becoming possessed
of Spain and Carthage. By the year 200 B.C. Rome was practically
master of the Western Mediterranean, though it took another century
to consolidate its heritage from Carthage in Spain and Mauritania.
During that century--the second before our era--Rome also extended
its Italian boundaries to the Alps by the conquest of Cisalpine
Gaul, which, however, was considered outside Italy, from which it
was separated by the river Rubicon. In that same century the Romans
had begun to interfere in the affairs of Greece, which easily fell
into their hands, and thus prepared the way for their inheritance
of Alexander's empire.