The Historians' History of the World 05

The original vice of the provincial administration of the republic consisted in the principle, openly avowed, that the native races were to be regarded as conquered subjects. The whole personnel of the civil and military government of the provinces was literally quartered upon the inhabitants; houses and establishments were provided for it at the cost of the provincials; the proconsul’s outfit, or vasarium

, was perhaps generally defrayed by a grant from the public treasury, but the sums required for his maintenance, and that of his retinue, known by the name of salarium

, was more commonly charged upon the local revenues. The proconsul himself indeed was supposed, in strictness, to serve the commonwealth gratuitously for the honour of the office; but practically he was left to remunerate himself by any indirect means of extortion he chose to adopt. As the supreme judicial as well as military authority there was no appeal against either the edicts he issued, or the interpretation he put upon them. The legions in occupation of the province were maintained at free quarters, and their daily pay supplied by the contributions of the inhabitants. The landowners were burdened with a tithe or other proportion of their produce, as a tribute to the conquering city. This payment was in most cases made by a composition, in which the proconsul was instructed to drive the hardest bargain he could for his employers. The local revenues were raised for the most part by direct taxes and customs’ dues; and these were generally farmed by Roman contractors, who made large fortunes from the transaction. Public opinion at home was such as rather to stimulate than to check their extortions. For it was a settled maxim of Roman policy that every talent extracted from the coffers of the provincial for the enrichment of the ruling caste was the transfer of so much of the sinews of war to the state from its enemies. But the rulers of the world were not content with the extortion of money from their subjects. An era of taste in art had recently dawned upon the rude conquerors of the East, and every proconsul, quæstor, and legatus was smitten with the desire to bring home trophies of Greek and Asiatic civilisation.

Punishment of a Traitor

Those among them ambitious of ingratiating themselves with their fellow-citizens sought out the most celebrated statues and pictures, and even the marble columns of edifices, for the decoration of public places in the city. They did not scruple to violate the shrines of the gods, and ransomed rebellious cities for the plunder of their favourite divinities. This thirst for spoil led to acts of abominable cruelty: where persuasion failed, punishments and tortures were unsparingly resorted to; the proconsul and his officials were all bound together in a common cause, and the impunity of the subordinates was repaid by zeal for the interests of the chief. Of those who could refrain from open violence, and withhold their hands from the plunder of temples and palaces, few could deny themselves the sordid gains of money-lending usury. The demands of the government were enforced without compunction, and the provincial communities were repeatedly driven to pledge their sources of revenue to Roman capitalists. The law permitted the usurer to recover his dues by the severest process. In a celebrated instance the agent of one of the most honourable men at Rome could shut up the senators of a provincial town in their curia, till five of them actually died of starvation, to recover the debts due to his principal.

When indeed this intolerable tyranny reached its height, the provinces might sometimes enjoy the sweets of revenge, though with little prospect of redress, or of any alleviation of their lot. In a government by parties, the misdeeds of one set of men could not fail to rouse the pretended indignation of another; and while the factions of Rome contended for the prerogatives of conquest, they tried to brand each other with the iniquity of their abuse. The domination of the senators, as established by Sulla, soon provoked the jealous animadversions of their excluded rivals. Their administration of the provinces, protected as it was by the tribunals in which they reigned themselves supreme, presented a vulnerable point of attack, and against the crimes of the senatorial proconsuls the deadliest shafts of the popular orators were directed. The remains of Roman eloquence have preserved to us more than one full-length portrait of a proconsular tyrant. It is impossible indeed to rely upon the fidelity of the colouring, or the correctness even of the lines; nevertheless the general impression they leave upon us is amply borne out by numerous independent testimonies. There is a limit in the possible and the probable even to the rhetorical exaggerations of the Roman demagogues. A slight sketch from one of these pictures may suffice to give us an idea of the frightful originals.