feet.  It was doubtless bad, that no rule of morality or of criminal law bound either the Roman administrators or their retinue, and that violent outrages, rapes, and murders with or without form of law were of daily occurrence in the provinces.  But these things were at least nothing new; almost everywhere men had long been accustomed to be treated like slaves, and it signified little in the long run whether a Carthaginian overseer, a Syrian satrap, or a Roman proconsul acted as the local tyrant.  Their material well-being, almost the only thing for which the provincials still cared, was far less disturbed by those occurrences, which although numerous in proportion to the many tyrants yet affected merely isolated individuals, than by the financial exactions pressing heavily on all, which had never previously been prosecuted with such energy.

The Romans now gave in this domain fearful proof of their old master of money-matters.  We have already endeavoured to describe the Roman system of provincial oppression in its modest and rational foundations as well as in its growth and corruption as a matter of course, the latter went on increasing.  The ordinary taxes became far more oppressive from the inequality of their distribution and from the preposterous system of levying them than from their high amount.  As to the burden of quartering troops, Roman statesmen themselves expressed the opinion that a town suffered nearly to the same extent when a Roman army took up winter quarters in it as when an enemy took it by storm.  While the taxation in its original character had been an indemnification for the burden of military defence undertaken by Rome, and the community paying tribute had thus a right to remain exempt from ordinary service, garrison-service was now—­as is attested e. g. in the case of Sardinia—­for the most part imposed on the provincials, and even in the ordinary armies, besides other duties, the whole heavy burden of the cavalry-service was devolved on them.  The extraordinary contributions demanded—­such as, the deliveries of grain for little or no compensation to benefit the proletariate of the capital; the frequent and costly naval armaments and coast-defences in order to check piracy; the task of supplying works of art, wild beasts, or other demands of the insane Roman luxury in the theatre and the chase; the military requisitions in case of war—­ were just as frequent as they were oppressive and incalculable.  A single instance may show how far things were carried.  During the three years’ administration of Sicily by Gaius Verres the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to 120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80; so that in four of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent of the landholders preferred to let their fields lie fallow than to cultivate them under such government.  And these landholders were, as their small number itself shows and as is expressly stated, by no means small farmers, but respectable planters and in great part Roman burgesses!