ly dependent on the revenues of Asia.
The assertion sounds quite credible that the other provinces on an
average cost nearly as much as they brought in; in fact those which
required a considerable garrison, such as the two Spains,
Transalpine Gaul, and Macedonia, probably often cost more than they
yielded. On the whole certainly the Roman treasury in ordinary
times possessed a surplus, which enabled them amply to defray the
expense of the buildings of the state and city, and to accumulate a
reserve-fund; but even the figures appearing for these objects,
when compared with the wide domain of the Roman rule, attest the
small amount of the net proceeds of the Roman taxes. In a certain
sense therefore the old principle equally honourable and judicious--
that the political hegemony should not be treated as a privilege
yielding profit--still governed the financial administration of the
provinces as it had governed that of Rome in Italy. What the Roman
community levied from its transmarine subjects was, as a rule, re-
expended for the military security of the transmarine possessions;
and if these Roman imposts fell more heavily on those who paid them
than the earlier taxation, in so far as they were in great part
expended abroad, the substitution, on the other hand, of a single
ruler and a centralized military administration for the many petty
rulers and armies involved a very considerable financial saving.
It is true, however, that this principle of a previous better age
came from the very first to be infringed and mutilated by the
numerous exceptions which were allowed to prevail. The ground-
tenth levied by Hiero and Carthage in Sicily went far beyond the
amount of an annual war-contributioa With justice moreover Scipio
Aemilianus says in Cicero, that it was unbecoming for the Roman
burgess-body to be at the same time the ruler and the tax-gatherer
of the nations. The appropriation of the customs-dues was not
compatible with the principle of disinterested hegemony, and the
high rates of the customs as well as the vexatious mode of levying
them were not fitted to allay the sense of the injustice thereby
inflicted. Even as early probably as this period the name of
publican became synonymous among the eastern peoples with that of
rogue and robber: no burden contributed so much as this to make the
Roman name offensive and odious especially in the east. But when
Gaius Gracchus and those who called themselves the "popular