rovincial rule.
But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once
republican and king. Playing the part of governors demoralized the
Roman ruling class \vith fearful rapidity. Haughtiness and arrogance
towards the provincials were so natural in the circumstances, as
scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate.
But already it was a rare thing--and the rarer, because the government
adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials
--that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province;
it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus, the
conqueror of Pydna, did not take money. The bad custom of delivering
to the governor "honorary wine" and other "voluntary" gifts seems as
old as the provincial constitution itself, and may perhaps have been
a legacy from the Carthaginians; even Cato in his administration of
Sardinia in 556 had to content himself with regulating and moderating
such contributions. The right of the magistrates, and of those
travelling on the business of the state generally, to free quarters
and free conveyance was already employed as a pretext for exactions.
The more important right of the magistrate to make requisitions of
grain in his province--partly for the maintenance of himself and his
retinue (-in cellam-) partly for the provisioning of the army in case
of war, or on other special occasions at a fair valuation--was already
so scandalously abused, that on the complaint of the Spaniards the
senate in 583 found it necessary to withdraw from the governors the
right of fixing the price of the supplies for either purpose.(32)
Requisitions had begun to be made on the subjects even for the popular
festivals in Rome; the unmeasured vexatious demands made on the
Italian as well as extra-Italian communities by the aedile Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus, for the festival which he had to provide, induced
the senate officially to interfere against them (572). The liberties
which Roman magistrates at the close of this period allowed themselves
to take not only with the unhappy subjects, but even with the
dependent free-states and kingdoms, are illustrated by the raids of
Gaius Volso in Asia Minor,(33) and above all by the scandalous
proceedings in Greece during the war with Perseus.(34)

Control over the Governors
Supervision of the Senate over the Provinces and Their Governors

The government had no right to be surprised at s