These companies and their agents were indeed destined to be a thorn in Cicero’s side as a provincial governor himself.  When called upon to rule Cilicia in 51 B.C. he found the people quite unable to pay their taxes and driven into the hands of the middleman in order to do so;[122] his sympathies were thus divided between the unfortunate provincials, for whom he felt a genuine pity, and the interests of the company for collecting the Cilician taxes, and of those who had invested their money in its funds.  In his edict, issued before his entrance into the province, he had tried to balance the conflicting interests; writing of it to Atticus, who had naturally as a capitalist been anxious to know what he was doing, he says that he is doing all he can for the publicani, coaxing them, praising them, yielding to them—­but taking care that they do no mischief;[123] words which perhaps did not altogether satisfy his friend.  All honest provincial governors, especially in the Eastern provinces, which had been the scene of continual wars for nearly three centuries, found themselves in the same difficulty.  They were continually beset by urgent appeals on behalf of the tax-companies and their agents—­appeals made without a thought of the condition of a province or its tax-paying capacity—­so completely had the idea of making money taken possession of the Roman mind.  Among the letters of Cicero are many such appeals, sent by himself to other provincial governors, some of them while he was himself in Cilicia.  We may take two as examples, before bringing this part of our subject to a close.

The first of these letters is to P. Silius Nerva, propraetor of Bithynia, a province recently added to the Empire by Pompeius.  Cicero here says that he is himself closely connected with the partners in the company for collecting the pasture-dues (scriptura) of the province, “not only because that company as a body is my client, but also because I am very intimate with most of the individual partners.”  Can we doubt that he was himself a shareholder?  He urges Nerva to do all he can for Terentius Hispo, the pro-magister of the company, and to try to secure for him the means of making all the necessary arrangements with the taxed communities—­relying, we are glad to find, on the tact and kindness of the governor.[124] The second letter, to his own son-in-law, Furius Crassipes, quaestor of Bithynia, shall be quoted here in full from Mr. Shuckburgh’s translation:[125]

“Though in a personal interview I recommended as earnestly as I could the publicani of Bithynia, and though I gathered that by your own inclination no less than from my recommendation, you were anxious to promote the advantage of that company in every way in your power, I have not hesitated to write you this, since those interested thought it of great importance that I should inform you what my feeling towards them was.  I wish you to believe that, while I have ever had the greatest pleasure in doing all I can