led a deputy of Augustus with the
function of praetor); this official governed the country, commanded the
army, and went on circuit through his province to judge important
cases, for he, like the emperor, had the right of life and death.

The emperor sent also a financial agent to levy the taxes and return
the money to the imperial chest. This official was called the
"procurator of Augustus." These two men represented the emperor,
governing his subjects, commanding his soldiers, and exploiting his
domain. The emperor always chose them among the two nobilities of
Rome, the praetors from the senators, the procurators from the knights.
For them, as for the magistrates of old Rome, there was a succession
of offices: they passed from one province to another, from one end of
the empire to the other,[150] from Syria to Spain, from Britain to
Africa. In the epitaphs of officials of this time we always find
carefully inscribed all the posts which they have occupied;
inscriptions on their tombs are sufficient to construct their
biographies.

=Municipal life.=--Under these omnipotent representatives of the
emperor the smaller subject peoples continued to administer their own
government. The emperor had the right of interfering in their local
affairs, but ordinarily he did not exercise this right. He only
demanded of them that they keep the peace, pay their taxes regularly,
and appear before the tribunal of the governor. There were in every
province several of these little subordinate governments; they were
called, just as at other times the Roman state was called, "cities,"
and sometimes municipalities. A city in the empire was copied after
the Roman city: it also had its assembly of the people, its
magistrates elected for a year and grouped into colleges of two
members, its senate called a curia, formed of the great proprietors,
people rich and of old family. There, as at Rome, the assembly of the
people was hardly more than a form; it is the senate--that is to say,
the nobility, that governs.

The centre of the provincial city was always a town, a Rome in
miniature, with its temples, its triumphal arches, its public baths,
its fountains, its theatres, and its arenas for the combats. The life
led there was that of Rome on a small scale: distributions of grain
and money, public banquets, grand religious ceremonies, and bloody
spectacles. Only, in Rome, it was the money of the provinces that paid
the expenses; in the municipali