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 quaestor, while in the imperial provinces the procurator came into direct contact with the tax-payer. But much was still left to the efforts of private companies, and the abolition of the decumani was perhaps the sole infringement made on the vast operations of the publicani. The extent to which the system of contracting out was still employed may be illustrated by the facts that "companies of Roman knights" are said still to have gathered in the pecuniae vectigales—by which the portoria are chiefly meant—and other publici fructus—the revenues from mines, salt-works, quarries, and the like—during the reign of Tiberius, that in the reign of Nero severe measures had to be taken to repress the exactions of the publicani, and that these state middlemen have a title devoted to them in the Digest of Justinian. Even a tax which fell to an imperial treasury, such as the vicesima hereditatum, was collected by contractors in the reign of Trajan. The contracts were no longer leased by a central authority in Rome, but by the official who controlled the department with which the tax was concerned. In most cases it was an imperial procurator who leased the tax, and perhaps to some extent supervised its collection. The direct taxes were paid to the quaestor in the public provinces, and in the imperial were collected by the procurators, of whose functions and operations we have already spoken. In connexion with the fiscus of each province there was a bureau (tabularium) in which the assessments were kept.

The method of government in the public provinces underwent considerable modifications, but suffered little formal alteration. The tenure of office was still annual, and the regulation that a five years' interval must elapse between home and foreign command, which had been neglected by Caesar, was revived by Augustus,[10] but considerations of fitness and another method of determining seniority considerably interfered with the application