er
he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of
his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the
most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse
--but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this
patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically
perilous side. In this way the result perhaps was that the Roman
magistrates in some degree feared the gods and the senate, and for
the most part were moderate in their plundering; but they plundered
withal, and did so with impunity, if they but observed such
moderation. The mischievous rule became established, that in the case
of minor exactions and moderate violence the Roman magistrate acted in
some measure within his sphere and was in law exempt from punishment,
so that those who were aggrieved had to keep silence; and from this
rule succeeding ages did not fail to draw the fatal consequences.
Nevertheless, even though the tribunals had been as strict as they
were lax, the liability to a judicial reckoning could only check
the worst evils. The true security for a good administration lay
in a strict and uniform supervision by the supreme administrative
authority: and this the senate utterly failed to provide. It was
in this respect that the laxity and helplessness of the collegiate
government became earliest apparent. By right the governors ought to
have been subjected to an oversight far more strict and more special
than had sufficed for the administration of Italian municipal affairs;
and now, when the empire embraced great transmarine territories, the
arrangements, through which the government preserved to itself the
supervision of the whole, ought to have undergone a corresponding
expansion. In both respects the reverse was the case. The governors
ruled virtually as sovereign; and the most important of the
institutions serving for the latter purpose, the census of the empire,
was extended to Sicily alone, not to any of the provinces subsequently
acquired. This emancipation of the supreme administrative officials
from the central authority was more than hazardous. The Roman
governor, placed at the head of the armies of the state, and in
possession of considerable financial resources: subject to but a
lax judicial control, and practically independent of the supreme
administration; and impelled by a sort of necessity to separate the
interest of himself and of the people w