war with Perseus, 210 millions of sesterces (2,100,000
pounds)--the latter, the largest sum in cash which ever came at one
time into the Roman treasury.

But this increase of revenue was for the most part counterbalanced by
the increasing expenditure. The provinces, Sicily perhaps excepted,
probably cost nearly as much as they yielded; the expenditure on
highways and other structures rose in proportion to the extension of
territory; the repayment also of the advances (-tributa-) received
from the freeholder burgesses during times of severe war formed a
burden for many a year afterwards on the Roman treasury. To these
fell to be added very considerable losses occasioned to the revenue
by the mismanagement, negligence, or connivance of the supreme
magistrates. Of the conduct of the officials in the provinces, of
their luxurious living at the expense of the public purse, of their
embezzlement more especially of the spoil, of the incipient system of
bribery and extortion, we shall speak in the sequel. How the state
fared generally as regarded the farming of its revenues and the
contracts for supplies and buildings, may be estimated from the
circumstance, that the senate resolved in 587 to desist from the
working of the Macedonian mines that had fallen to Rome, because the
lessees of the minerals would either plunder the subjects or cheat
the exchequer--truly a naive confession of impotence, in which the
controlling board pronounced its own censure. Not only was the duty
from the occupied domain-land allowed tacitly to fall into abeyance,
as has been already mentioned, but private buildings in the capital
and elsewhere were suffered to encroach on ground which was public
property, and the water from the public aqueducts was diverted to
private purposes: great dissatisfaction was created on one occasion
when a censor took serious steps against such trespassers, and
compelled them either to desist from the separate use of the public
property, or to pay the legal rate for the ground and water. The
conscience of the Romans, otherwise in economic matters so scrupulous,
showed, so far as the community was concerned, a remarkable laxity.
"He who steals from a burgess," said Cato, "ends his days in chains
and fetters; but he who steals from the community ends them in gold
and purple." If, notwithstanding the fact that the public property
of the Roman community was fearlessly and with impunity plundered by
officials and specu