tor, but otherwise was--like the consul in earlier
times before the praetorship was instituted--in his own sphere of
action at once commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme
judge. The direct administration of finance alone was withheld from
these new chief magistrates, as from the first it had been withheld
from the consuls;(5) one or more quaestors were assigned to them,
who were in every way indeed subordinate to them, and were their
assistants in the administration of justice and in command, but yet
had specially to manage the finances and to render account of their
administration to the senate after having laid down their office.

Organization of the Provinces
-Commercium-
Property
Autonomy

This difference in the supreme administrative power was the essential
distinction between the transmarine and continental possessions. The
principles on which Rome had organized the dependent lands in Italy,
were in great part transferred also to the extra-Italian possessions.
As a matter of course, these communities without exception lost
independence in their external relations. As to internal intercourse,
no provincial could thenceforth acquire valid property in the province
out of the bounds of his own community, or perhaps even conclude a
valid marriage. On the other hand the Roman government allowed, at
least to the Sicilian towns which they had not to fear, a certain
federative organization, and probably even general Siceliot diets
with a harmless right of petition and complaint.(6) In monetary
arrangements it was not indeed practicable at once to declare the
Roman currency to be the only valid tender in the islands; but it
seems from the first to have obtained legal circulation, and in like
manner, at least as a rule, the right of coining in precious metals
seems to have been withdrawn from the cities in Roman Sicily.(7) On
the other hand not only was the landed property in all Sicily left
untouched--the principle, that the land out of Italy fell by right of
war to the Romans as private property, was still unknown to this
century--but all the Sicilian and Sardinian communities retained self-
administration and some sort of autonomy, which indeed was not assured
to them in a way legally binding, but was provisionally allowed.
If the democratic constitutions of the communities were everywhere
set aside, and in every city the power was transferred to the hands
of a council representing the civic aristocra