Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/367

Rh allegiance or servility is again illustrated by inscriptions. At Ephesus, in the name of council and people “and the other Greek cities of Asia,” he is styled “descendant of Ares and Aphrodite, a glorious god and common saviour of human life.” Even the people of Mitylene who so lately had styled Pompey their benefactor and founder were fain to seek Caesar's friendship and favour. Caesar had already in his first consulship (B.C. 59) benefited the provinces by passing a law to limit the amount of requisition to be made by a governor and his staff: his actual benefits now were rather in the restoration of order and peace than in more palpable ways. But in Asia he abolished the system of farming the revenue by Roman publicani, fixing the amount to be paid by each state, and leaving it to be levied by native or Greek collectors. He also placed a colony of veterans in Corinth, which quickly regained something of its old prosperity, and he projected the cutting of a canal across the isthmus—a work which, started a hundred years later by Nero, has only been accomplished within the last few years. The liberties and privileges of the cities he seems to have left much as he found them. But just before his death he seems to have arranged that Greece should be for three years at least united to Macedonia, under the rule of Marcus Brutus, at any rate, so far as it had always been under the pro-consul of Macedonia.

In the renewed civil war of B.C. 43–2 Athens and other parts of Greece once more committed themselves to the losing side. It was from Athens that Marcus Brutus started to take over his Macedonian