d condemn to death at will,
individuals gave him security-money. If he demanded an object of art
or even a sum of money, who would dare to refuse him? The men of his
escort imitated his example, pillaging under his name, and even under
his protection. The governor was in haste to accumulate his wealth as
it was necessary that he make his fortune in one year. After he
returned to Rome, another came who recommenced the whole process.
There was, indeed, a law that prohibited every governor from accepting
a gift, and a tribunal (since 149) expressly for the crime of
extortion. But this tribunal was composed of nobles and Roman knights
who would not condemn their compatriot, and the principal result of
this system was, according to the remark of Cicero, to compel the
governor to take yet more plunder from the province in order to
purchase the judges of the tribunal.

It cannot surprise one that the term "proconsul" came to be a synonym
for despot. Of these brigands by appointment the most notorious was
Verres, propraetor of Sicily, since Cicero from political motives
pronounced against him seven orations which have made him famous. But
it is probable that many others were as bad as he.

=The Publicans.=--In every province the Roman people had considerable
revenues--the customs, the mines, the imposts, the grain-lands, and
the pastures. These were farmed out to companies of contractors who
were called publicans. These men bought from the state the right of
collecting the impost in a certain place, and the provincials had to
obey them as the representatives of the Roman people. And so in every
province there were many companies of publicans, each with a crowd of
clerks and collectors. These people carried themselves as masters,
extorted more than was due them, reduced the debtors to misery,
sometimes selling them as slaves. In Asia they even exiled the
inhabitants without any pretext. When Marius required the king of
Bithynia to furnish him with soldiers, the king replied that, thanks
to the publicans, he had remaining as citizens only women, children,
and old people. The Romans were well informed of these excesses.
Cicero wrote to his brother, then a governor, "If you find the means
of satisfying the publicans without letting the provincials be
destroyed, it is because you have the attributes of a god." But the
publicans were judged in the tribunals and the proconsuls themselves
obeyed them. Scaurus, the proconsul of Asia,