of ownership indeed
the private means of the monarch remained, of course, strictly
separate from the property of the state; but Caesar took in hand
the administration of the whole financial and monetary system
of the state, and conducted it entirely in the way in which
he and the Roman grandees generally were wont to manage
the administration of their own means and substance. For the future
the levying of the provincial revenues and in the main also
the management of the coinage were entrusted to the slaves and freedmen
of the Imperator and men of the senatorial order were excluded from it--
a momentous step out of which grew in course of time the important class
of procurators and the "imperial household."

In the Governorships

Of the governorships on the other hand, which, after they had handed
their financial business over to the new imperial tax-receivers,
were still more than they had formerly been essentially military commands,
that of Egypt alone was transferred to the monarch's own retainers.
The country of the Nile, in a peculiar manner geographically isolated
and politically centralized, was better fitted than any other district
to break off permanently under an able leader from the central power,
as the attempts which had repeatedly been made by hard-pressed Italian
party-chiefs to establish themselves there during the recent crisis
sufficiently proved. Probably it was just this consideration
thatinduced Caesar not to declare the land formally a province,
but to leave the harmless Lagids there; and certainly for this reason
the legions stationed in Egypt were not entrusted to a man
belonging to the senate or, in other words, to the former government,
but this command was, just like the posts of tax-receivers,
treated as a menial office.(25) In general however the consideration
had weight with Caesar, that the soldiers of Rome should not,
like those of Oriental kings, be commanded by lackeys. It remained
the rule to entrust the more important governorships to those
who had been consuls, the less important to those who had been praetors;
and once more, instead of the five years' interval prescribed
by the law of 702,(26) the commencement of the governorship probably
was in the ancient fashion annexed directly to the close of the official
functions in the city. On the other hand the distribution
of the provinces among the qualified candidates, which had hitherto
been arranged sometimes by decree of the