.
The more important right of the magistrate to make requisitions of
grain in his province--partly for the maintenance of himself and his
retinue (-in cellam-) partly for the provisioning of the army in case
of war, or on other special occasions at a fair valuation--was already
so scandalously abused, that on the complaint of the Spaniards the
senate in 583 found it necessary to withdraw from the governors the
right of fixing the price of the supplies for either purpose.(32)
Requisitions had begun to be made on the subjects even for the popular
festivals in Rome; the unmeasured vexatious demands made on the
Italian as well as extra-Italian communities by the aedile Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus, for the festival which he had to provide, induced
the senate officially to interfere against them (572). The liberties
which Roman magistrates at the close of this period allowed themselves
to take not only with the unhappy subjects, but even with the
dependent free-states and kingdoms, are illustrated by the raids of
Gaius Volso in Asia Minor,(33) and above all by the scandalous
proceedings in Greece during the war with Perseus.(34)

Control over the Governors
Supervision of the Senate over the Provinces and Their Governors

The government had no right to be surprised at such things, for it
provided no serious check on the excesses of this capricious military
administration. Judicial control, it is true, was not entirely
wanting. Although, according to the universal but more than
questionable rule of allowing no complaint to be brought against a
commander-in-chief during his term of office,(35) the Roman governor
could ordinarily be called to account only after the mischief had
been done, yet he was amenable both to a criminal and to a civil
prosecution. In order to the institution of the former, a tribune of
the people by virtue of the judicial power pertaining to him had to
take the case in hand and bring it to the bar of the people; the civil
action was remitted by the senator who administered the corresponding
praetorship to a jury appointed, according to the constitution of the
tribunal in those times, from the ranks of the senate. In both cases,
therefore, the control lay in the hands of the ruling class, and,
although the latter was still sufficiently upright and honourable not
absolutely to set aside well-founded complaints, and the senate even
in various instances, at the call of those aggrieved, condescended
it