The governor’s staff. The governor was accompanied by a quaestor, who acted as his treasurer and received the provincial revenue from the tax collectors. His staff also comprised three legati or lieutenants, senators appointed by the senate, but usually nominated by himself, whose function it was to assist him with their counsel and act as his deputies when necessary. He also took with him a number of companions (comites), usually young men from the families of his friends, who were given this opportunity of gaining a knowledge of provincial government and who could be used in any official capacity. In addition, the governor brought his own retinue, comprising clerks and household servants.
The provincial taxes. The taxes levied upon the provinces were at first designed to pay the expenses of occupation and defence. Hence they bore the name stipendium, or soldiers’ pay. At a later date the provinces were looked upon as the estates of the Roman people and the taxes as a form of rental. The term tributum (tribute), used of the property tax imposed on Roman citizens did not come into general use for the provincial revenues until a later epoch. As a rule the Romans accepted the tax system already in vogue in [pg 113]each district before their occupancy, and exacted either a fixed annual sum from the province as in Spain, Africa and Macedonia or one tenth (decuma) of the annual produce of the soil, as in Sicily and Asia. The tribute imposed by the Romans was not higher, but usually lower than what had been exacted by the previous rulers. The public lands, mines, and forests, of the conquered state were incorporated in the Roman public domain, and the right to occupy or exploit them was leased to individuals or companies of contractors. Customs dues (portoria) were also collected in the harbors and on the frontiers of the provinces.
The tax collectors. Following the custom established in Italy, the Roman state did not collect its taxes in the provinces through public officials but leased for a period of five years the right to collect each particular tax to the private corporation of tax collectors (publicani) which made the highest bid for the privilege. These corporations were joint stock companies, with a central office at Rome and agencies in the provinces in which they were interested. It was this system which was responsible for the greatest evils of Roman provincial administration. For the publicani were usually corporations of Romans, bent on making a profit from their speculation, and practised under the guise of raising the revenue, all manner of extortion upon the provincials. It was the duty of the governor to check their rapacity, but from want of sympathy with the oppressed and unwillingness to offend the Roman business interests this duty was rarely performed. Hand in hand with tax collecting went the business of money lending, for the Romans found a state of chronic bankruptcy prevailing in the Greek world and made loans everywhere at exorbitant rates of interest. To collect overdue payments the Roman bankers appealed to the governor, who usually quartered troops upon delinquent communities until they satisfied their creditors.
The rapacity of the governors. A further source of misgovernment lay in the greed of the governor and his staff. The temptations of unrestricted power proved too great for the morality of the average Roman. It is true that there were not wanting Roman governors who maintained the highest traditions of Roman integrity in public office, but there were also only too many who abused their power to enrich themselves. While the shortness of his term of office prevented a good governor from thoroughly understanding the conditions of his province, it served to augment the criminal zeal with which an ava[pg 114]ricious proconsul, often heavily indebted from the expenses of his election campaigns, sought to wring a fortune from the hapless provincials. Bribes, presents, illegal exactions, and open confiscations were the chief means of amassing wealth. In this the almost sovereign position of the governor and his freedom from immediate senatorial control guaranteed him a free hand.
The quaestio rerum repetundarum: 149 B. C. The mischief became so serious that in 149 B. C. the public conscience awoke to the wrong and ruin inflicted upon the provinces, and by a Calpurnian Law a standing court was instituted for the trial of officials accused of extortion in the provinces. This court was composed of fifty jurors drawn from the Senate and was presided over by a praetor. From its judgment there was no appeal. Its establishment marks an important innovation in Roman legal procedure in criminal cases. It is possible also that the Senate was encouraged to undertake the organization of new provinces shortly after 149 because it believed that this court would serve as an adequate means of controlling the provincial governors. But it was useless to expect very much from such a tribunal. The cost of a long trial at Rome, the difficulty of securing testimony, the inadequacy of the penalty provided, which was limited to restitution of the damage inflicted, as well as the fear of vengeance from future governors, would deter the majority of sufferers from seeking reparation. Nor could an impartial verdict be expected from a jury of senators trying one of their own number for an offense which many of them regarded as their prerogative. And so till the end of the republic the provincials suffered from the oppression of their governors, as well as from that of the tax-collectors.
III. Social and Economic Development
Outstanding characteristics of the period. The epoch of foreign expansion which we are considering was marked by a complete revolution in the social and economic life of Rome and Italy. It witnessed the spread of the slave plantations, the decline of the free Italian peasantry, the growth of the city mob of Rome, the great increase in the power of the commercial and capitalist class, and the introduction of a new standard of living among the well-to-do.
The slave plantations. The introduction of the plantation system, that is, of the cultivation of large estates (latifundia) by slave [pg 115]labor, was the result of several causes: the Roman system of administering the public domain, the devastation of the rural districts of South Italy in the Hannibalic War, the abundant supply of cheap slaves taken as prisoners of war, and the inability of the small proprietors to maintain themselves in the face of the demands of military service abroad and the competition of imported grain as well as that of the latifundia themselves.
The public domain that was not required for purposes of colonization had always been open for pasturage or cultivation to persons paying a nominal rental to the state. Those who profited most from this system were the wealthier landholders who could occupy and cultivate very considerable areas. This fact explains the senatorial opposition to the division and settlement of the ager Gallicus proposed and carried by the tribune Flaminius in 233 B. C. The dangers of the practice to the smaller proprietors caused the passing of laws, probably late in the third century, which limited the amount of public land to be occupied by any individual and his family. But these laws were disregarded, for the Senate administered the public domain and the senators were the wealthy landholders. After several generations the public lands occupied in this way came to be regarded as private property. The havoc wrought by Hannibal in South Italy, where he destroyed four hundred communities, caused the disappearance of the country population and opened the way for the acquisition of large estates there, and the law which restricted the commercial activities of senators and forbade their engaging in tax collecting or undertaking similar state contracts encouraged them to invest their capital in Italian land and stimulated the growth of their holdings.