Thus ended this war of twenty-four years, which indeed gained Sicily for the Romans, but turned it into a wilderness: the whole of the western part of the island especially was laid desolate, and from that time it has never recovered. There was yet, it is true, some civilization left; Greek art still lingered there. The work of devastation was completed in the second Punic war; in the Servile war, the island was nothing but a dreary waste, and however wretched its state is now,—the modern Sicilians, next to the Portuguese, rank the lowest among the nations of Europe,—yet it was still more lonely and desolate in the times of Verres. Under the Roman emperors, there was no amendment: hence in the itineraries we find that the roads do not pass by towns,—for these had perished,—but by farms. Thus dissolved into large estates Sicily continues until the days of Gregory the Great, when we may again have an insight into its condition from the letters of that pontiff. The present population, in spite of its miserable government, has risen nearly to the double of what it was: under Verres it was below a million. It is as if the soil had lost all its heart and fruitfulness. The small kingdom of Syracuse was an exception, owing to the great wisdom with which it was ruled by Hiero.