m on foot and attended by a single
servant, who carried his coat and sacrificial ladle; and, when he
returned home from his Spanish governorship, he sold his war-horse
beforehand, because he did not hold himself entitled to charge the
state with the expenses of its transport. There is no question that
the Roman governors--although certainly but few of them pushed their
conscientiousness, like Cato, to the verge of being niggardly and
ridiculous--made in many cases a powerful impression on the subjects,
more especially on the frivolous and unstable Greeks, by their old-
fashioned piety, by the reverential stillness prevailing at their
repasts, by their comparatively upright administration of office and
of justice, especially by their proper severity towards the worst
bloodsuckers of the provincials--the Roman revenue-farmers and
bankers--and in general by the gravity and dignity of their
deportment. The provincials found their government comparatively
tolerable. They had not been pampered by their Carthaginian stewards
and Syracusan masters, and they were soon to find occasion for
recalling with gratitude the present rods as compared with the coming
scorpions: it is easy to understand how, in later times, the sixth
century of the city appeared as the golden era of provincial rule.
But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once
republican and king. Playing the part of governors demoralized the
Roman ruling class \vith fearful rapidity. Haughtiness and arrogance
towards the provincials were so natural in the circumstances, as
scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate.
But already it was a rare thing--and the rarer, because the government
adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials
--that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province;
it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus, the
conqueror of Pydna, did not take money. The bad custom of delivering
to the governor "honorary wine" and other "voluntary" gifts seems as
old as the provincial constitution itself, and may perhaps have been
a legacy from the Carthaginians; even Cato in his administration of
Sardinia in 556 had to content himself with regulating and moderating
such contributions. The right of the magistrates, and of those
travelling on the business of the state generally, to free quarters
and free conveyance was already employed as a pretext for exactions