and worked for profit by a privileged minority.  And yet it is a privilege of the highest natures thus creatively to err.  The brilliant attempts of great men to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim, form the best treasure of the nations.  It was owing to the work of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators, however little they otherwise resembled the great founder of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main not against the citizen but against the public foe, and esteemed both nation and army too highly to set the latter as constable over the former.

Financial Administration

The regulation of financial matters occasioned comparatively little difficulty in consequence of the solid foundations which the immense magnitude of the empire and the exclusion of the system of credit supplied.  If the state had hitherto found itself in constant financial embarrassment, the fault was far from chargeable on the inadequacy of the state revenues; on the contrary these had of late years immensely increased.  To the earlier aggregate income, which is estimated at 200,000,000 sesterces (2,000,000 pounds), there were added 85,000,000 sesterces (850,000 pounds) by the erection of the provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Syria; which increase, along with the other newly opened up or augmented sources of income, especially from the constantly increasing produce of the taxes on luxuries, far outweighed the loss of the Campanian rents.  Besides, immense sums had been brought from extraordinary sources into the exchequer through Lucullus, Metellus, Pompeius, Cato, and others.  The cause of the financial embarrassments rather la partly in the increase of the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure, partly in the disorder of management.  Under the former head, the distribution of corn to the multitude of the capital claimed almost exorbitant sums; through the extension given to it by Cato in 691(40) the yearly expenditure for that purpose amounted to 30,000,000 sesterces (300,000 pounds) and after the abolition in 696 of the compensation hitherto paid, it swallowed up even a fifth of the state revenues.  The military budget also had risen, since the garrisons of Cilicia, Syria, and Gaul had been added to those of Spain, Macedonia, and the other provinces.  Among the extraordinary items of expenditure must be named in the first place the great cost of fitting out fleets, on which, for example, five years after the great razzia of 687, 34,000,000 sesterces (340,000 pounds) were expended at once.  Add to this the very considerable sums which were consumed in wars and warlike preparations; such as 18,000,000 sesterces (180,000 pounds) paid at once to Piso merely for the outfit of the Macedonian army, 24,000,000 sesterces (240,000 pounds) even annually to Pompeius for the maintenance and pay of the Spanish army, and similar sums to Caesar