From among the knights the emperor himself despatches, some to the citizen posts alone but others to foreign places (according to the custom then instituted by [the same] Caesar), the military tribunes, the prospective senators and the remainder, concerning whose difference in rank I have previously spoken in the narrative.[4] The procurators (a name that we give to the men who collect the public revenues and spend what is ordered) he sends to all the provinces alike, his own and the people’s, and some of these officers belong to the knights, others to the freedmen.  By way of exception the proconsuls levy the tribute upon the people they govern.  The emperor gives certain injunctions to the procurators, the proconsuls, and the propraetors, in order that they may proceed to their place of office on fixed conditions.  Both this practice and the giving of salary to them and to the remaining employees of the government were made the custom at this period.  In old times some by contracting for work to be paid for from the public treasury furnished themselves with everything needed for their office.  It was only in the days of Caesar that these particular persons began to receive something definite.  This salary was not assigned to all of them in equal amounts, but as need demands.  The procurators get their very name, a dignified one, from the amount of money given into their charge.  The following laws were laid down for all alike,—­that they should not make up lists for service or levy money beyond the amount appointed, unless the senate should so vote or the emperor so order:  also that when their successors should arrive, they were immediately to leave the province and not to delay on their return, but to be back within three months.

[-16-] These matters were so ordained at that time,—­or, at least, one might say so.  In reality Caesar himself was destined to hold absolute control of all of them for all time, because he commanded the soldiers and was master of the money; nominally the public funds had been separated from his own, but in fact he spent the former also as he saw fit.

When his decade had come to an end, there was voted him another five years, then five more, after that ten, and again another ten, and a like number the fifth time,[5] so that by a succession of ten-year periods he continued monarch for life.  Consequently the subsequent emperors, though no longer appointed for a specified period but for their whole life at once, nevertheless have been wont to hold a festival every ten years as if then renewing their sovereignty once more:  this is done even at the present day.

Caesar had received many honors previously, when the matter of declining the sovereignty and that regarding the division of the provinces were under discussion.  For the right to fasten the laurel in front of his royal residence and to hang the oak-leaf crown above the doors was then voted him to symbolize the fact that he was always victorious over enemies and preserved the citizens.  The royal building is called Palatium, not because it was ever decreed that that should be its name, but because Caesar dwelt on the Palatine and had his headquarters there; and his house secured some renown from the mount as a whole by reason of the former habitation of Romulus there.  Hence, even if the emperor resides somewhere else, his dwelling retains the name of Palatium.