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50 B.C.]

table at a price fixed by the Senate, and payable by the Roman Treasury. The amount of corn was far greater than that actually needed for the proconsul's consumption, and when, as this year in Cilicia, famine prices were ruling, the burden of supplying the corn was willingly commuted for a sum of money. We learn from the speech against Verres that gains from this source might be accepted by honourable men, and that a great difference on either side between the price fixed by the Senate and that actually ruling in the market was a piece of luck of which almost every governor took advantage. In Cicero's case we find that by the end of the year £22,000 stood to his credit on deposit at Ephesus; most of the money was, however, lent by him to Pompey, and swept away into the bottomless gulf of expenditure for the Civil War.

The proconsul was not only supreme judge and administrator in his province, but likewise commander-in-chief of its army of occupation. Cicero found himself with a force miserably insufficient both in quantity and quality and with the danger of a Parthian invasion on his hands. With the aid of the native kings of Cappadocia and Galatia he made a tolerable demonstration on the eastern frontier of his province. Meantime the Parthians, who had over-run the neighbouring province of Syria, were defeated by Cassius the lieutenant of Bibulus, and retired across the Euphrates. All the world expected them back again the next