Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/350

320 petition between rival companies, who often therefore paid a heavy sum to the Exchequer, and consequently had, in order to avoid bankruptcy, to exact the last farthing from the taxpayers. The attempt to appeal against extortionate acts on the part of these publicani was seldom successful. The governor was often himself implicated by the taking of percentages, and the jury before whom such cases came in Rome were themselves equites (to which order all the publicani belonged), and interested either actually or potentially in maintaining the system. The expenses of a prosecution, with the necessary journey of witnesses, would be enormous, and the prospect of redress slight. There were instances, of course, of good and honest men as governors, but they ran the risk of political ruin at the hands of the equites if they interfered with the publicani. A notorious case was that of P. Rupilius Rufus, who was a legate of Q. Mucius Scaevola in B.C. 95. The rule of Scaevola himself was long remembered by the Asiatic Greeks, not only for its integrity, but for its encouragement of local rights and privileges. He seems to have been out of the reach of the equites, but his legate Rupilius, who had distinguished himself by repressing the extortion of the publicani, was prosecuted and condemned, and passed the rest of his life in exile. The system, however, lasted on till B.C. 48, and it involved besides its direct hardships the presence in the country of numerous Italian money-lenders and of bankers who found their opportunity in the necessities of states and individuals alike.