of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent
of the landholders preferred to let their fields lie fallow
than to cultivate them under such government. And these landholders were,
as their small number itself shows and as is expressly stated, by no means
small farmers, but respectable planters and in great part Roman burgesses!

In the Client-States

In the client-states the forms of taxation were somewhat different,
but the burdens themselves were if possible still worse,
since in addition to the exactions of the Romans there came
those of the native courts. In Cappadocia and Egypt the farmer
as well as the king was bankrupt; the former was unable to satisfy
the tax-collector, the latter was unable to satisfy his Roman creditor.
Add to these the exactions, properly so called, not merely
of the governor himself, but also of his "friends," each of whom fancied
that he had as it were a draft on the governor and a title accordingly
to come back from the province a made man. The Roman oligarchy
in this respect completely resembled a gang of robbers,
and followed out the plundering of the provincials in a professional
and business-like manner; capable members of the gang set to work
not too nicely, for they had in fact to share the spoil
with the advocates and the jurymen, and the more they stole,
they did so the more securely. The notion of honour in theft too
was already developed; the big robber looked down on the little,
and the latter on the mere thief, with contempt; any one, who had been
once for a wonder condemned, boasted of the high figure of the sums
which he was proved to have exacted. Such was the behaviour
in the provinces of the successors of those men, who had been
accustomed to bring home nothing from their administration but the thanks
of the subjects and the approbation of their fellow-citizens.

The Roman Capitalists in the Provinces

But still worse, if possible, and still less subject to any control
was the havoc committed by the Italian men of business among
the unhappy provincials. The most lucrative portions of the landed
property and the whole commercial and monetary business
in the provinces were concentrated in their hands. The estates
in the transmarine regions, which belonged to Italian grandees,
were exposed to all the misery of management by stewards, and never
saw their owners; excepting possibly the hunting-parks, which occur
as early as this time in Transalpine Gaul with a