Usury flourished as it had never flourished before. The small landowners in Illyricum, Asia, and Egypt managed their estates even in Varro's time in great part practically as the debtor-slaves of their Roman or non-Roman creditors, just as the plebeians in former days for their patrician lords. Cases occurred of capital being lent even to urban communities at four per cent per month. It was no unusual thing for an energetic and influential man of business to get either the title of envoy(81) given to him by the senate or that of officer by the governor, and, if possible, to have men put at his service for the better prosecution of his affairs; a case is narrated on credible authority, where one of these honourable martial bankers on account of a claim against the town of Salamis in Cyprus kept its municipal council blockaded in the town-house, until five of the members had died of hunger.
Robberies And Damage By War
To these two modes of oppression, each of which by itself was intolerable and which were always becoming better arranged to work into each other's hands, were added the general calamities, for which the Roman government was also in great part, at least indirectly, responsible. In the various wars a large amount of capital was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies. Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police, brigands and pirates swarmed every where. In Sardinia and the interior of Asia Minor brigandage was endemic; in Africa and Further Spain it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed outside of the city-enclosures with walls and towers. The fearful evil of piracy has been already described in another connection.(82) The panaceas of the prohibitive system, with which the Roman governor was wont to interpose when scarcity of money or dearth occurred, as under such circumstances they could not fail to do-- the prohibition of the export of gold or grain from the province-- did not mend the matter. The communal affairs were almost everywhere embarrassed, in addition to the general distress, by local disorders and frauds of the public officials.
The Conditions Of The Provinces Generally
Where such grievances afflicted communities and individuals not temporarily but for generations with an inevitable, steady, and yearly-increasing oppression, the best regulated public or private economy could not but succumb to them, and the most unspeakable misery could not but extend over all the nations from the Tagus to the Euphrates. "All the communities," it is said in a treatise published as early as 684, "are ruined"; the same truth is specially attested as regards Spain and Narbonese Gaul, the very provinces which, comparatively speaking, were still in the most tolerable economic position. In Asia Minor even towns like Samos and Halicarnassus stood almost empty; legal slavery seemed here a haven of rest compared with the torments to which the free provincial succumbed, and even the patient Asiatic had become, according to the descriptions of Roman statesmen themselves, weary of life. Any one who desires to fathom the depths to which man can sink in the criminal infliction, and in the no less criminal endurance, of all conceivable injustice, may gather together from the criminal records of this period the wrongs which Roman grandees could perpetrate and Greeks, Syrians, and Phoenicians could suffer. Even the statesmen of Rome herself publicly and frankly conceded that the Roman name was unutterably odious through all Greece and Asia; and, when the burgesses of the Pontic Heraclea on one occasion put to death the whole of the Roman tax-collectors, the only matter for regret was that such things did not occur oftener.
Caesar And The Provinces
The Optimates scoffed at the new master who went in person to inspect his "farms" one after the other; in reality the condition of the several provinces demanded all the earnestness and all the wisdom of one of those rare men, who redeem the name of king from being regarded by the nations as merely a conspicuous example of human insufficiency. The wounds inflicted had to be healed by time; Caesar took care that they might be so healed, and that there should be no fresh inflictions.
The Caesarian Magistrates
The system of administration was thoroughly remodelled. The Sullan proconsuls and propraetors had been in their provinces essentially sovereign and practically subject to no control; those of Caesar were the well-disciplined servants of a stern master, who from the very unity and life-tenure of his power sustained a more natural and more tolerable relation to the subjects than those numerous, annually changing, petty tyrants. The governorships were no doubt still distributed among the annually-retiring two consuls and sixteen praetors, but, as the Imperator directly nominated eight of the latter and the distribution of the provinces among the competitors depended solely on him,(83) they were in reality bestowed by the Imperator. The functions also of the governors were practically restricted. The superintendence of the administration of justice and the administrative control of the communities remained in their hands; but their command was paralyzed by the new supreme command in Rome and its adjutants associated with the governor,(84) and the raising of the taxes was probably even now committed in the provinces substantially to imperial officials,(85) so that the governor was thenceforward surrounded with an auxiliary staff which was absolutely dependent on the Imperator in virtue either of the laws of the military hierarchy or of the still stricter laws of domestic discipline. While hitherto the proconsul and his quaestor had appeared as if they were members of a gang of robbers despatched to levy contributions, the magistrates of Caesar were present to protect the weak against the strong; and, instead of the previous worse than useless control of the equestrian or senatorian tribunals, they had to answer for themselves at the bar of a just and unyielding monarch. The law as to exactions, the enactments of which Caesar had already in his first consulate made more stringent, was applied by him against the chief commandants in the provinces with an inexorable severity going even beyond its letter; and the tax-officers, if indeed they ventured to indulge in an injustice, atoned for it to their master, as slaves and freedmen according to the cruel domestic law of that time were wont to atone.