If Augustus left these two provinces to be administered by the senate, he kept his own grasp all the more firmly upon the province of Egypt, which extended from the oasis of the desert to the Arabian Gulf, and from the river delta to the rocky mountains of Syene. A military advanced post in Ethiopia was withdrawn at a later time, for it was no part of Augustus’ scheme to enlarge the borders of the empire. The emperor regarded Egypt as his own special domain and watched over it jealously. No senator was allowed to travel through the country without his express permission; the administration and the supreme command of a very considerable army of occupation were in the hands of a trustworthy man who possessed his full confidence. The care which Augustus bestowed upon agriculture, irrigation, and trade was well repaid by the fertility of the country and its advantageous situation. In the first period of Roman dominion Egypt attained a height of prosperity which threw the years of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies into the shade.
Egypt not only became the granary of the hungry populace of the capital, but its fine garments of linen and cotton were highly prized commodities, even as they had been in the remote past; while the passion for scribbling which possessed the Romans made the papyrus leaf an important article of export. Moreover Alexandria was the emporium and mart for both Indian and Arabian wares, for delicate fabrics of cotton, from the ordinary calico to the most valuable tissues which constituted the costliest dress of Roman women and were even the chosen wear of effeminate men. These last were called Seric robes, and were made from a product of the silkworm, the genesis and local habitation of which was shrouded in mysterious obscurity all through antique times.
More than a hundred Roman merchantmen sailed yearly from the Red Sea to the west coast of India and the Persian Gulf, to procure in their native places the treasures of the tropics and the costly wares of eastern lands and seas—spices and drugs, incense and myrrh, odorous ointments and dyestuffs, ivory, precious stones, pearls, and other articles of luxury—to sell at a great profit in Rome and Baiæ and the splendid seats of the nobility. The Seric (Chinese), Indian, and Arabian commodities which annually found their way through Alexandria to Italy are said to have amounted in value to over £1,440,000 or $7,200,000. But this great prosperity redounded less to the advantage of the natives than of the ruling race.
The oppressive system of taxation introduced by the Ptolemies was still in force, and became so intolerable in course of time that the people repeatedly had desperate recourse to violent remedies, thus merely increasing their own misery and helping the province forward on the road to poverty, decay, and desolation. The succeeding emperors were constantly under the necessity of carrying on campaigns in the Nile region, on account of the mischief done by the bucoles or cattle-herds, those numerous robber bands which dwelt in the impenetrable reed-swamps on the middle arm of the Nile, keeping their women and children safe on small barges and themselves undertaking hostile raids on the neighbouring districts, in defiance of all forms of civil order.
In all this regulation and organisation we can plainly trace the plan of a sagacious ruler, who intended to put an end to the lax conditions that prevailed under the republic, with its exactions and arbitrary dealings, to check offences against property, and to mould the state into a durable monarchical form. What Cæsar had begun in times of violent agitation and party strife, his more fortunate successor accomplished on a magnificent scale under more peaceful circumstances. Protected from oppression and ill treatment by laws and ordinances, the provinces rose to renewed prosperity; many of them like Gaul, Spain, and the Alpine tribes now entered for the first time upon a political and civilised existence worthy of the name.
The Hellenic states could not struggle to the height of their former greatness under the iron hand of Rome, but the fault lay chiefly in the weakness they had brought upon themselves before the days of Roman supremacy by their suicidal fury. Their part in history was played out, and they slowly perished of the wounds inflicted by their own hands. “It was beyond the power of Rome to renew the youth and creative energy of intellect in the Greek races,” says Hœck, “but what she had to give she gave. She preserved Anterior Asia from the worst of fates, that of falling a prey to the eastern barbarians; she saved the aftermath of Hellenic culture, and procured for this nation, as for others, a pleasant private life in the evening of its ancient historic existence.”
By judicious regulation and admirable administration the monarchy healed the wounds which the free commonwealth had inflicted upon the subject countries. “The time was gone by when the right of the victor brought an endless train of the vanquished to the capital and when Rome took for her own the most glorious works of foreign art, the creations of a nobler age and race.” The requisitions and imposts were not small, the land tax and property tax, the poll tax and other subsidies, levied from the provincials in the senatorial provinces by quæstors for the ærarium or state treasury, in the Cæsarian provinces by procurators for the imperial privy purse and military exchequer. Under the empire as under the republic the mines and the port and frontier duties were claimed by the government. And the obligation of military service was occasionally burdensome. Yet all these drawbacks were far more than counterbalanced by the state of order and equity which Augustus endeavoured to establish in all parts. The proconsuls and procurators were appointed either by the absolute authority of the emperor or with the concurrence of the senate, were responsible to the former for their conduct in office, and had fixed salaries and allowances for equipment and travelling expenses.
The orderly business departments opposed a barrier against encroachments and arbitrary dealings on the part of governors or their legates and minor officers, and provided the appeal to the imperial tribunal as a protective measure. The civil and military supremacy of the emperor kept provincial officials within bounds. It became customary to commute payments in kind (tenths of grain, fifths of the vintage and oil harvest) into payments in money based on average prices and a moderate estimate; the burden of military service and taxation was mitigated by means of the exemption accorded to particular districts and communities, by security from devastating wars and hostile incursions, and by the fact that the leading positions and military honours were open to all.
Augustus laid the foundation of the great system of roads, which connected the provinces with one another and with imperial Rome. Military roads, the construction and extent of which fill us with admiration to this day, gave facilities for traffic in all directions. They were adorned with milestones, all of which took their start from the golden milestone which Augustus himself had set up in the midst of the Forum, and provided with stations (mutationes) and hostelries (mansiones), the former for changes of couriers or horses and conveyances,—for the military roads were also used for the state post organised by the emperor,—the latter for accommodation at night. Means of transit by water were also increased, and distance ceased to form a gulf of separation. Armies could move with great rapidity from any part of the empire to any destination, and the emperor’s commands could be transmitted to the remotest regions. Daily journals carried the news of what occurred at Rome in the briefest possible time to all quarters of the world; Rome was the centre of the empire and the heart of the body politic.
The careful scheme of colonisation which Augustus undertook after the example of Cæsar and carried out on an immense scale, and which was also pursued by succeeding emperors, contributed above all things to disseminate Roman culture, speech, and jurisprudence, and to impress a uniform character upon the whole of the great empire. The results of imperial colonisation were in the highest degree beneficial. For while in barbarous lands they sowed in virgin soil the seeds of a noble civilisation and a workable system of law and political organisation, they infused fresh vigour into old and moribund civilisations and furnished them with stable political and judicial institutions; thus supplying the men of the toga who were dispersed all over the whole empire with a centre and fulcrum for their commercial and industrial activity. At the same time they offered the emperor the most satisfactory means of providing for his discharged legionaries and establishing settlements of impoverished Romans and Italians.