Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/108

 96 THE ROMAN DOMINION of Roman citizens had been actually reduced by more than a fifth. In the third year more than half the seats of the Senate were vacant. Agriculture had long been declining; and it almost perished when the whole country was being overrun with armies, and the adult population was drained to maintain the numbers of the legions. But the war was hardly over when expansion began. Roman legions and Roman officers were brought in contact with the Effect of wealth and the luxuries of foreign cities and foreign Expansion. courts. The temptations to extortion were enor- mous, as the British were to find them enormous in India some two thousands years later. Rome became greedy of conquest and of the spoils of conquest j while the governing class, which had by far the largest opportunities for spoliation, became the more greedy and the more selfish as it waxed richer on ill-gotten gain. Again, the Roman government had developed as that of a city. It became little modified while it was still in the main the rule of a city over other cities, and it still remained efficient. But when the Roman aristocracy found itself providing for the Provincial efficient control of great dominion's across the seas Governors. the case became different. Provincial government had actually begun with the acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia after the first Punic War. These acquisitions could not be governed on the simple method of placing them en the same footing as the Italian allies. A governor was appointed to each province, having within its boundaries the same sort of powers as a Roman consul, with the title of praetor ; but separate officers called quaestors were in control of the finances. Evidently such powers were largely open to abuse. But there was another fundamental difference in the treat- ment of the provinces, arising from the conditions already pre- Taxation of vailing in Sicily. The Sicilian states had paid taxes Provinces. r tribute to the two dominant powers, Carthage and Syracuse. They continued to pay taxes to Rome on agri- cultural produce, and on both imports and exports. As new provinces were organised the same principle was naturally applied to them. But they were not required to furnish military contingents. Now in Italy the principle had been uniformly