Of course, as in my city mansion, so also at Villa Andivia, I have had constructed and consecrated a handsome private chapel to Mercury.
NOTES TO ANDIVIUS HEDULIO
A. THE ROMAN ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM
From the expulsion of the Kings, the people of Rome, assembled in their voting-field outside their city, each year elected the magistrates for the year: others, and especially quaestors, answering to our army-paymaster and custom-house collectors; praetors (judges, generals and governors of provinces), and two consuls, acting as chief-magistrates and generals-in- chief. A man was generally first quaestor, later praetor and finally consul, often holding other intermediary offices.
Ex-officials, who had held the more important offices of the Republic, became by immemorial custom life-members of the Senate, which was never an elective, always a selective body, without legal authority but with great influence. As the Republic's Empire spread the Senate was less and less able to control provincial governors, until such self-confident geniuses as Sulla, Caesar and Augustus became able to control it. The Roman Republic was never abolished, and did not die till the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. It conquered a great Empire and when its Senate could no longer control the magistrates who managed that Empire, its solders who, by conquering and holding provinces to pay taxes maintained the Empire and the Republic, wearied of the incompetence of the Senate's appointees, of the squabbles and strife of their leaders, chose by acclamation one commander whom they loved and trusted. The Senate, at his mercy, legalized his sovereignty by conferring on him for life the powers of a Tribune, an official who could initiate nothing, but had the legal power to forbid anything and everything.
The Senate continued to administer those provinces reckoned safe from invasion or insurrection; always two governed by ex-consuls and about ten governed each by an ex-praetor. It continued to dispose of the funds derived from their taxes and to recruit itself from ex-magistrates and to retain much of its influence, dignity and importance.
The outer provinces and those prone to turbulence were governed not by ex- consuls and ex-praetors acting in the name of the Senate, but each by a deputy of the Emperor, styled propraetor, praeses, or procurator. These were called imperial provinces. The magistrates of the senatorial provinces were, under the Empire, no longer elected by the people, but appointed by the Senate, with or without an indication of the Emperor's wishes.
The Romans never devised any method of choosing a chief magistrate other than acclamation by an army and confirmation by the Senate, creating an Emperor. If two commanders at about the same time were separately saluted "Imperator," as were Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger, there was no method of adjudicating their conflicting claims except by Civil War and the survival of one Imperator only.
B. THE FISCUS
From this word comes our "confiscate," "to turn totally into the Fiscus." A fiscus was a large basket, such is were used by all Roman financial concerns to contain live vouchers. The fiscus was the organization managing the pubic property, income and expenditures of the Roman Emperor. It controlled the proceeds of the taxes of all the imperial provinces and of the domains, mines, quarries, fisheries, factories, town property and whatever else the fiscus held for the Emperors, impersonally. It gathered in all moneys and possessions forfeited for suicide, crime or treason.