A tolerable degree of uniformity was also secured in the political structure of the towns of Italy. It was but a development of the typical Italian constitution of magistrates (magistratus potestatesve),[1484] senate (senatus, curia, composed of decuriones conscriptive), and popular assembly (comitia conciliumve, composed of municipes and sometimes of incolae); and the lex Julia municipalis of Caesar (45 B.C.) ordains a uniform qualification for the local magistracies and senates, and enjoins that the local census shall be taken in conjunction with that of Rome. But, though the general lines of organisation were the same, this uniformity was chiefly the result of growth, not of creation. No effort was made at securing a common nomenclature either for the states or for their officials. Caesar’s municipal law shows municipia, coloniae and praefecturae existing side by side,[1485] while inscriptions show titles for officials, such as dictator or praetor, which may be as old as those of Roman magistrates.[1486]
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORGANISATION AND GOVERNMENT OF THE PROVINCES
When Rome had asserted her supremacy over the greater part of Sicily at the close of the first Punic war, a new problem in organisation was presented to her. She held, perhaps rightly, that these new dependencies, with their transmarine position, fickle politics, and in some cases Carthaginian sympathies, could not safely be included in the military symmachy of Italy; so she substituted tribute for military service, placed the command of the cities of a wide district under the guidance of the personal imperium, and created the first permanent external department of administration (provincia). The government which had been adopted for Hellenic cities was still more necessary for the barbarians of Spain, a country which Rome had not sought but which military exigencies alone warned her not to leave. The recognition of Empire in the West was rapid and easy, for the effective government of Italy seemed to involve the control of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Senate showed greater hesitancy in accepting a similar Adriatic policy, and declined to recognise that Rome had permanent interests even in eastern Europe of a magnitude that should lead to Empire. War followed war, Greece was once and Macedon twice at her feet, but on every occasion she declined to annex. It was not until experience had proved the costliness and the danger of a protectorate that in 146 B.C. Macedonia was recognised as a province with Achaea as its annexe. The troublesome relations with Carthage had meanwhile ended in war and annexation, and what had hitherto been rather a distant problem—Rome’s relations with the potentates of Asia—became, as the years rolled on and as Roman trade struck deeper roots in the East, one of paramount concern. The history of eastern Europe was repeated in Asia, and although Rome had already a foothold in Anatolia through her acceptance of the kingdom of Pergamus, the death-blow to the protectorate system in these regions was first struck by Pompeius’ organisation of the East at the close of the Mithridatic wars (65-63). Further extensions in the West and North, which resulted in the conquest of further Spain and of Gaul, were due to the enterprise of individual commanders, or to the search for a frontier which should be a permanent protection against barbarian invasion; and at the close of the Republic the list of Roman provinces had risen to fifteen.[1487]
The idea of a province was that of an aggregate of states (civitates); where Greek or Phoenician civilisation had penetrated, these states were cities, but sometimes, as in Gaul and Spain, they were cantons or tribes. Natural political associations were usually chosen as the units of government, although formidable combinations were broken up, and the numerical regulation of the government centres in a province was an integral part of its organisation. Thus the number of communal unions was in Sicily 68,[1488] in Asia 44,[1489] and 64 in Transalpine Gaul.[1490] Such aggregates probably include the free and federate states, which, although geographically, were not juristically within the province at all. The cities which were liberae and those which were liberae et foederatae differed, sometimes perhaps in the degree, but always in the basis, of their rights. The latter had the grant of their rights embodied in a sworn treaty (foedus), which was the product in the earlier Republic of Senate and people, in the later of either of these powers,[1491]—a guarantee which was meant to be perpetual, and the breach of which was either an act of war or its result. A charter (lex data), on the other hand,[1492] which made a city only “free” might be revoked at any moment. The rights common to both groups of states are practically those of the Italian communes[1493]—a control of their own finances, a free enjoyment of their land which exempted them from the payment of tribute, and above all a use and enjoyment of their own native law[1494]—and both agree in being entirely outside the sphere of the governor’s jurisdiction.[1495] He could enter such a privileged city only as a guest, and although for purposes of convenience great central cities which were free, as Antioch in Syria and Thessalonica in Macedonia, were, from their position as natural capitals, chosen as the residence of the governor, he merely exercised jurisdiction in these towns, not over their citizens. More distant still from provincial rule were the allied kings (reges socii) on the frontiers. Their independence was less conditioned than that of the free and allied cities, for they were bound to furnish less definite assistance to Rome in time of need, and their foreign activity was not wholly destroyed. But the chief reason why in a list of Rome’s friends they appear in a separate category[1496] is that a treaty with a king was not, like one with a Republic, regarded as eternal. It was a personal obligation, and its perpetual validity depended on its renewal with each successive occupant of the throne.
States which belonged to neither of these categories were subject or, as the phrase ran, tributary (stipendiariae), the test of subjection being the normal one in the ancient world of the payment of a tax to a superior. Yet these too had their rights and their charter. The guarantee, however, was no longer individual but collective, and was contained in the law of the province (lex provinciae). This law was usually the work of the conquering general himself, assisted by ten senatorial commissioners (decem legati) appointed by the Senate, and it continued to bear the name of its chief creator, as we see in the cases of the lex Rupilia of Sicily,[1497] the lex Aemilia of Macedonia,[1498] and the lex Pompeia of Bithynia.[1499] While it re-established the states of a conquered district, it also gave them certain ultimate rights. It defined the burden of the tribute, specified the particular circuit-courts which the citizens of the various towns were to attend, and framed regulations, which the governor was expected to observe, about national and international jurisdiction. But these regulations, slight and general as they were, are no sufficient test of the amount of autonomy, in administration and jurisdiction, actually enjoyed by the subject towns. Much of their independence was permissive and based on the will of the governor. But the ruler, whether honest or dishonest, was practically bound to grant it, for the Roman government had provided him with no staff which could take over the minuter duties of administration; if he was an enlightened man, he cherished the fiction that the states were free;[1500] if unenlightened, he at least knew that by permitting self-government he was saving himself trouble. In the case of the eastern cities the neglect of the governor was almost as great an evil as his exactions.[1501]
The theory of Roman taxation was in origin that it was a war indemnity. This accounts for the fact that in the early days of Rome’s dealings with conquered peoples a tax might be imposed even on nations which were declared free,[1502] and for the name stipendium (“payment for the army”) which was borne by the direct taxation imposed by Roman commissioners on provincials.[1503] This equitable theory, that the taxes collected should merely defray the expenses of the military occupation and administration of a province, seems to have been realised in practice where the Roman government took the trouble to organise a system of its own. The Macedonians were made to pay but half of what they had paid to their kings,[1504] the Spanish provinces must have cost more than they brought in, and in Cicero’s time it was only the Asiatic provinces, where taxes were imposed on quite a different system, that yielded a surplus.[1505] It was this system, which the Romans found existing in Sicily, Sardinia, and Asia, and with their characteristic negligence elected to preserve, which changed the whole theory of Roman taxation. The principle was that of the payment by the cultivator (arator) of a tithe (decuma) of the produce of his land. It was inevitable that the Roman lawyer should associate this due with the vectigal paid by the occupants of ager publicus, and should evolve from the comparison the strange theory that land in the provinces was not owned but merely “possessed” by its holders.[1506] The chief practical consequences of the tithe system were a surplus to the treasury, and the exactions of the middlemen (publicani) through the indirect system of collection which it involved.
The direct tax (stipendium) was collected by a tribute assessed either on the land (tributum soli) or on the personalty of individuals (tributum capitis).[1507] The Romans of the Republic seem never to have attempted to form an accurate estimate of the resources furnished by the land and personal wealth of a province; doubtless in Hellenised districts they employed the systems which they found existing, such as the schedules which formed the bases of the εἰσφοραί: in Spain amongst other rough expedients they seem to have adopted a valuation tax on a proportion of the produce of the soil;[1508] while elsewhere, as in Macedonia,[1509] they fixed a total on the existing basis of collection. The direct tax was usually collected by the communes themselves and paid to the governor’s quaestor.
The tithe (decuma) was collected on the contract system, and the difference in its mode of collection in the vectigales provinciae depended on whether the site of the auction was in the province itself, where local companies or even communities[1510] could compete for its collection, or whether the tithes of the whole province must be put up to auction in Rome, in which case the province was likely to become the prey of a single Roman company. In Sicily the first system was adopted in accordance with the principles laid down by Hiero, its last great king (lex Hieronica);[1511] the second system was devised by C. Gracchus for Asia and was doubtless extended to eastern provinces subsequently organised such as Cilicia.[1512] The pretext for the change was no doubt the incapacity of the Asiatic cities to collect their own dues,[1513] and was welcome to the weakness of the states, which liked to have near them a body of Roman capitalists from whom they could borrow in emergency; but it created a pernicious connexion between capitalism and administration which made the government of the Asiatic dependencies the gloomiest scene of Roman rule. The tithe system in Asia, and perhaps in other provinces where it prevailed, was abolished by Caesar in 48 B.C.[1514] The harbour and frontier dues (portoria), the source of revenue next in value to the direct tribute or the tithe, were collected by private companies (portitores) perhaps throughout the whole imperial world, as they had been from the earliest times in Italy.[1515] Other dues demanded from the province were paid for by the Roman government. Such were the corn supplied for the praetor and his retinue (frumentum in cellam or frumentum aestimatum),[1516] and the second decuma sometimes required by the state (frumentum emptum) and raised by command of the Senate and people.[1517] In both these cases a reasonable price was fixed by the Roman government.
We pass now to the governor and his staff. The early institution of praetors and the later use of the pro-magistracy for provincial government have already been described.[1518] But we have seen that even Sulla did not formally dissociate the consulship and praetorship from provincial rule.[1519] The consequences of this continued association were curious. By a law of C. Gracchus, which aimed at destroying one of the most valuable pieces of patronage which the Senate had at its disposal, the consular provinces must be assigned before the election of their holders.[1520] They are strictly consular, and are technically entered on by their possessors on March 1 of their year of office, although no definite agreement need be come to as to their partition until the following December[1521]—the earliest date at which the consuls of the later Republic could quit their urban duties. March 1 was the beginning of the military and provincial year, as since 152 B.C. January 1 had been of the year of civil office at Rome. The reason why the 1st of March of the year of office at Rome was chosen, and not the same date in the following year, was that the pro-magistracy was not yet recognised as a separate office, and that, if this second solution had been adopted, the interval between December 29 and March 1 would have caused a break in the imperium.[1522] The anomaly resulted that a provincial governor held his command only for two months in his own right, and for ten months while waiting for his successor. It was harmless in practice, inasmuch as Sulla’s law had ordained that the governor should retain his imperium until he returned to Rome, and need only quit his province thirty days after the arrival of his successor,[1523] and was only accidentally disastrous as leading to the quarrel between Caesar and the Senate, and thence to the downfall of the Roman Republic. The pro-magistracy was first raised into a separate office by a Pompeian law of 52 B.C., which enacted that governors should seek their provinces five years after holding office at Rome. It was a law that, by diminishing the nearness of the prize, was intended to make the consulship and praetorship less an object of illegitimate ambition at Rome. It might, therefore, have conferred a slight indirect benefit on the provincials, but the speedy collapse of the Republican government prevented its adequacy being tested. The tenure of a provincial governorship was nominally annual, but, even after Sulla had raised the number of praetors to eight, there were but ten magistrates available for fifteen provinces, and we know of three propraetors—Verres in Sicily, Q. Cicero in Asia, and Fonteius in Narbonese Gaul—who severally held their provincial commands for three years in succession.