free towns were
even ordinarily exempted from the winter quartering of the troops--
permanent camps were not yet known. If the governor therefore
needed grain, ships, slaves to man them, linen, leather, money,
or aught else, he was no doubt absolutely at liberty in time
of war--nor was it far otherwise in time of peace--to demand such
supplies according to his discretion and exigencies from the subject-
communities or the sovereign protected states; but these supplies
were, like the Roman land-tax, treated legally as purchases or
advances, and the value was immediately or afterwards made good by
the Roman exchequer. Nevertheless these requisitions became, if
not in the theory of state-law, at any rate practically, one of the
most oppressive burdens of the provincials; and the more so, that
the amount of compensation was ordinarily settled by the government
or even by the governor after a one-sided fashion. We meet indeed
with several legislative restrictions on this dangerous right of
requisition of the Roman superior magistrates: for instance, the
rule already mentioned, that in Spain there should not be taken
from the country people by requisitions for grain more than the
twentieth sheaf, and that the price even of this should be equitably
ascertained;(11) the fixing of a maximum quantity of grain to be
demanded by the governor for the wants of himself and his retinue;
the previous adjustment of a definite and high rate of compensation
for the grain which was frequently demanded, at least from Sicily,
for the wants of the capital. But, while by fixing such rules
the pressure of those requisitions on the economy of the communities
and of individuals in the province was doubtless mitigated here
and there, it was by no means removed. In extraordinary crises
this pressure unavoidably increased and often went beyond all bounds,
for then in fact the requisitions not unfrequently assumed the form
of a punishment imposed or that of voluntary contributions enforced,
and compensation was thus wholly withheld. Thus Sulla in 670-671
compelled the provincials of Asia Minor, who certainly had very
gravely offended against Rome, to furnish to every common soldier
quartered among them forty-fold pay (per day 16 -denarii- = 11 shillings),
to every centurion seventy-five-fold pay, in addition to clothing
and meals along with the right to invite guests at pleasure; thus
the same Sulla soon afterwards imposed a general contributio