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 CHAPTER XI

ITALY AND THE PROVINCES UNDER THE PRINCIPATE

§ 1. The Organisation of Italy

The chief feature of the organisation of Italy during the early Principate was the completion of the efforts made during the later Republic at incorporating its towns with Rome. The unity aimed at was chiefly that of jurisdiction, but we have no evidence of the steps which Augustus took to perfect the system of judicial centralisation, which had been devised at the close of the Republic. At the same time this Emperor adopted a device which, though its full details and effects are unknown, seemed to foreshadow the later principle of a close administrative unification of Italy with the capital. He divided the peninsula, exclusive of the immediate territory of Rome, into eleven regions (regiones). The immediate purpose contemplated by this division is unknown; but it laid the basis for subsequent distributions of many branches of Italian administration. The public domains, taxes paid by Roman citizens such as the vicesima hereditatum, and the results of the census, were organised or calculated by regions. They were employed, therefore, for work which necessarily fell on the central government, and this organisation so far implied no infringement on the communal autonomy of the towns. Such infringement came as a necessary result of the influence of the personality of the Princeps, which finally dominated Italy as effectually as it controlled Rome. But its coming was very gradual· The final change may be illustrated by the