a man of rigid
probity,[128] wished to prevent them from pillaging his province; on
his return to Rome they had him accused and condemned.

The publicans drove to extremities even the peaceable and submissive
inhabitants of the Orient: in a single night, at the order of
Mithradates, 100,000 Romans were massacred. A century later, in the
time of Christ, the word "publican" was synonymous with thief.

=The Bankers.=--The Romans had heaped up at home the silver of the
conquered countries. And so silver was very abundant in Rome and
scarce in the provinces. At Rome one could borrow at four or five per
cent.; in the provinces not less than twelve per cent. was charged.
The bankers borrowed money in Rome and loaned it in the provinces,
especially to kings or to cities. When the exhausted peoples could not
return the principal and the interest, the bankers imitated the
procedure of the publicans. In 84 the cities of Asia made a loan to
pay an enormous war-levy; fourteen years later, the interest alone had
made the debt amount to six times the original amount. The bankers
compelled the cities to sell even their objects of art; parents sold
even their children. Some years later one of the most highly esteemed
Romans of his time, Brutus, the Stoic, loaned to the city of Salamis
in Cyprus a sum of money at forty-eight per cent. interest (four per
cent. a month). Scaptius, his business manager, demanded the sum with
interest; the city could not pay; Scaptius then went in search of the
proconsul Appius, secured a squadron of cavalry and came to Salamis to
blockade the senate in its hall of assembly; five senators died of
famine.

=Defencelessness of the Provincials.=--The provincials had no redress
against all these tyrants. The governor sustained the publicans, and
the Roman army and people sustained the governor. Admit that a Roman
citizen could enter suit against the plunderers of the provinces: a
governor was inviolable and could not be accused until he had given up
his office; while he held his office there was nothing to do but to
watch him plunder. If he were accused on his return to Rome, he
appeared before a tribunal of nobles and of publicans who were more
interested to support him than to render justice to the provincials.
If, perchance, the tribunal condemned him, exile exempted him from all
further penalty and he betook himself to a city of Italy to enjoy his
plunder. This punishment was nothing to him and was not ev