Lastly while the government thus energetically applied itself to remove the diseased, and to strengthen the sound, elements of the Italian national life, the newly-regulated municipal system - which had but recently developed itself out of the crisis of the Social war in and alongside of the state-economy[76] - was intended to communicate to the new absolute monarchy the communal life which was compatible with it, and to impart to the sluggish circulation of the noblest elements of public life once more a quickened action. The leading principles in the two municipal ordinances issued in 705 for Cisalpine Gaul and in 709 for Italy[77], the latter of which remained the fundamental law for all succeeding times, are apparently, first, the strict purifying of the urban corporations from all immoral elements, while yet no trace of political police occurs; secondly, the utmost restriction of centralization and the utmost freedom of movement in the communities, to which there was even now reserved the election of magistrates and an - although limited - civil and criminal jurisdiction.

The general police enactments, such as the restrictions on the right of association[78], came, it is true, into operation also here. Such were the ordinances, by which Caesar attempted to reform the Italian national economy. It is easy both to show their insufficiency, seeing that they allowed a multitude of evils still to exist, and to prove that they operated in various respects injuriously by imposing restrictions, some of which were very severely felt, on freedom of dealing. It is still easier to show that the evils of the Italian national economy generally were incurable. But in spite of this the practical statesman will admire the work as well as the master-workman. It was already no small achievement that, where a man like Sulla, despairing of remedy, had contented himself with a mere formal reorganization, the evil was seized in its proper seat and grappled with there; and we may well conclude that Caesar with his reforms came as near to the measure of what was possible as it was given to a statesman and a Roman to come. He could not and did not expect from them the regeneration of Italy; but he sought on the contrary to attain this in a very different way, for the right apprehension of which it is necessary first of all to review the condition of the provinces as Caesar found them.

The provinces, which Caesar found in existence, were fourteen in number: seven European - the Further and the Hither Spain, Transalpine Gaul, Italian Gaul with Illyricum, Macedonia with Greece, Sicily, Sardinia with Corsica; five Asiatic - Asia, Bithynia and Pontus, Cilicia with Cyprus, Syria, Crete; and two African - Cyrene and Africa. To these Caesar added three new ones by the erection of the two new governorships of Lugdunese Gaul and Belgica[79] and by constituting Illyricum a province by itself[80].

In the administration of these provinces oligarchic misrule had reached a point which, notwithstanding various noteworthy performances in this line, no second government has ever attained at least in the west, and which according to our ideas it seems no longer possible to surpass. Certainly the responsibility for this rests not on the Romans alone. Almost everywhere before their day the Greek, Phoenician, or Asiatic rule had already driven out of the nations the higher spirit and the sense of right and of liberty belonging to better times. It was doubtless bad, that every accused provincial was bound, when asked, to appear personally in Rome to answer for himself; that the Roman governor interfered at pleasure in the administration of justice and the management of the dependent communities, pronounced capital sentences, and cancelled transactions of the municipal council; and that in case of war he treated the militia as he chose and often infamously, as e. g. when Cotta at the siege of the Pontic Heraclea assigned to the militia all the posts of danger, to spare his Italians, and on the siege not going according to his wish, ordered the heads of his engineers to be laid at his feet. It was doubtless bad, that no rule of morality or of criminal law bound either the Roman administrators or their retinue, and that violent outrages, rapes, and murders with or without form of law were of daily occurrence in the provinces. But these things were at least nothing new; almost everywhere men had long been accustomed to be treated like slaves, and it signified little in the long run whether a Carthaginian overseer, a Syrian satrap, or a Roman proconsul acted as the local tyrant. Their material well-being, almost the only thing for which the provincials still cared, was far less disturbed by those occurrences, which although numerous in proportion to the many tyrants yet affected merely isolated individuals, than by the financial exactions pressing heavily on all, which had never previously been prosecuted with such energy.

The Romans now gave in this domain fearful proof of their old master of money-matters. We have already endeavoured to describe the Roman system of provincial oppression in its modest and rational foundations as well as in its growth and corruption as a matter of course, the latter went on increasing. The ordinary taxes became far more oppressive from the inequality of their distribution and from the preposterous system of levying them than from their high amount. As to the burden of quartering troops, Roman statesmen themselves expressed the opinion that a town suffered nearly to the same extent when a Roman army took up winter quarters in it as when an enemy took it by storm. While the taxation in its original character had been an indemnification for the burden of military defence undertaken by Rome, and the community paying tribute had thus a right to remain exempt from ordinary service, garrison-service was now - as is attested e. g. in the case of Sardinia - for the most part imposed on the provincials, and even in the ordinary armies, besides other duties, the whole heavy burden of the cavalry-service was devolved on them.

The extraordinary contributions demanded - such as, the deliveries of grain for little or no compensation to benefit the proletariate of the capital; the frequent and costly naval armaments and coast-defences in order to check piracy; the task of supplying works of art, wild beasts, or other demands of the insane Roman luxury in the theatre and the chase; the military requisitions in case of war - were just as frequent as they were oppressive and incalculable. A single instance may show how far things were carried. During the three years' administration of Sicily by Gaius Verres the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to 120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80; so that in four 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!