Hannibal's Legacy does not deal with military events, except incidentally. it is a study of the effect, on Roman life, of Rome's complete military victory over Carthage in the first two Romano-Carthaginian Wars. Hannibal's genius was defeated by Rome's man-power; but Hannibal won a posthumous revenge. The devastation of South-Eastern Italy, during the fifteen years of his occupation of it, set in motion a revolution that began on the economic, social, and religious planes and eventually spread to the political planes as well. this revolution brought Rome into line with the more precocious communities of the Mediterranean World, of which Rome herself had been a part since the sixth century B.C. the Roman commonwealth had been an association of city-states, governed by the Roman nobility, that had lived by subsistence farming. it now turned into a monarchical empire of the post-Alexandrian Greek type, with a professional army and civil service and with a commercialized economy. Rome's conquest of Italy may have made it inevitable that this change should take place eventually; but the effect of the Romano-Carthaginian Double War was to speed up this perhaps inevitable process and at the same time to give it a revolutionary turn that was disastrous.This first volume is a survey and analysis of the structure of the Roman commonwealth at about the year 266 B.C., when Rome had just finished conquering Italy and had not yet made war on Carthage. Rome, as she was at this date, is compared with the other principle contemporary states of the Mediterranean World, and the likenesses and differences between these and Rome are reviewed. The historical-background to the Roman Commonwealth of 266 B.C. is also examined in some detail.The Survey is continued in the second volume, from the beginning of the second bout of the Double War down to 133 B.C.