own regulation; while again a third class of smaller districts he either left to client-kings, or if this laxer bond was tightened by a regular provincial organisation, assigned to the charge of his own procurators. Within this general scheme the details of rank and privilege, of duty and responsibility, of subordinate and co-ordinate power, were carefully defined, as carefully and thoroughly in their way as the much more complex system of Diocletian was three hundred years later.

In theory all provincial rule depended in the last resort on the senate, for it was involved in the proconsular imperium which the senate alone could confer. But this imperium was conferred once for all, and with no restriction of place, on the emperor, who thus had all the provinces potentially under his direct control. In practice, however, by the arrangement of 27 B.C., the senate was allowed to confer the proconsular power, though strictly limited, in time and place, on the governors of those provinces which were assigned to their administration. Hence the governors of all senatorial provinces were proconsuls. They were not subordinated to any higher executive authority, theoretically not even to the emperor, whose proconsular imperium was constitutionally co-ordinate with theirs. They were equally proconsuls, whether it was Sardinia or Corsica which they governed, or large and important provinces like Asia or Africa. In either case they were appointed by the senate and by lot, and held office for a single year only. For two provinces only, Asia and Africa, was full consular rank a necessity, and the proconsuls of those provinces were dignified with twelve fasces. The other provinces were held by men of praetorian rank, who only were entitled to six fasces. There was no incapacity in the senatorial proconsuls to command an army, and in certain cases they might have legionary troops, as, eg. till the time of Caligula, the proconsul of Africa actually had. But in the military command the principle of co-ordination was under the empire unknown. Everything depended on the emperor's will, and practically the proconsuls and the senatorial provinces had no troops except occasional 'vexillationes' from the legions and auxiliaries. Even in the matter of the military levy, or conscription which, during the first century, was conducted for

the legions in the senatorial provinces, the proconsul would only act on a direct mandate from the emperor.

As holders of supreme, i.e. undelegated authority, the proconsuls were privileged to appoint legati as deputies, mandatories, or delegates of their power. Of these, consular proconsuls could appoint three, the others only one each. These assisted the proconsul in his various duties, and in case of his absence or death represented him in the province. To mark their delegated power and their subordination to the proconsul, these officers were pro praetore, and as they were appointed by the proconsul they were in full 'legati proconsulis pro praetore.' Besides these legati, who were responsible at first to the proconsul only, but whose responsibility to the senate as well was established at a later time (Plin. Ep. iv 9 and vi 29), the proconsul had under him a quaestor appointed by the senate to manage all the financial relations between the province and the aerarium, which were thus taken out of the governor's hand, while his own personal staff or 'cohors,' consisting of personal friends or protegés, were employed in various more undefined duties, but all responsible finally to the senate. Financial matters being not within the proconsul's functions, and military power being rarely allowed him, his duties were mainly administrative and judicial. The former were perhaps by their nature vague both in their extent and in their limitations, the latter necessarily depended much on the circumstances of the province. In theory all the civitates liberae and foederatae were extra provinciam, in the province but not of it, privileged to use their own laws and constitutions; practically, as Mommsen points out in the case of Greece, all these high-sounding titles and privileges were entirely precarious and might be annulled by a stroke of the proconsul's pen. In judicial matters civil jurisdiction was perhaps the most prominent of the proconsul's duties. The province was divided into conventus, and in passing from one to another of these the proconsul and his legates spent most of their year of office (Dig. i 16, 5). From the legates there was an appeal to the proconsul, but from the latter, except for Roman citizens, there was no further appeal, and his decisions were final. In criminal matters ordinary cases were tried before the municipal magistrates, but important cases came before the proconsul, who, except in the case of

Roman citizens, possessed the power of life and death.

For his use of this power, however, he was liable to be accused, as, e.g. Volesus Messalla, proconsul of Asia, was in the time of Augustus (Tac. Ann. iii 68, and Sen. de Ira. ii 5). Naturally,

as the Roman franchise was extended, the criminal jurisdiction of the provincial governors assumed continually narrower proportions. Generally speaking, the senatorial provinces, being only indirectly under the emperor's eye, were administered with comparative laxity. Flagrant abuses no doubt were quite exceptional, but the annual change of governors, the appointment by lot, senatorial laissez-faire, rendered impossible the experience, the special fitness, and the alertness which mark the imperial governors. We find in Bithynia, which is only a type of the class, embarrassed finances, misapplication of revenue, jobbery in public buildings, ill-regulated collegia, and a general want of enterprise, while to transfer a province from the senate to the emperor was considered a sufficient answer to complaints of debt and distress.

In contrast with the senatorial provinces, those reserved for the emperor were subject directly to his proconsular imperium. This however he delegated to governors chosen by himself, and holding office during his pleasure. For the most important provinces he would usually choose consulares, for the others praetorii, but this was at first at any rate entirely within his own competence in each case, and made no difference in their official titles or dignity. For whether consular or praetorian, they were merely the mandatories of an executive power higher than their own. They were therefore 'legati,' and as subject to and not possessing proconsular power they could only be propraetore, while, as chosen by the emperor himself, they were legati Augusti pro praetore. This inferior dignity, however, marked by their having five fasces only, was more than compensated by their greater actual powers, especially in military matters. A legate to Britain or Upper or Lower Germany or Syria might have as many as four legions, with a corresponding number of auxiliary troops under his command. As legati or

deputies, however, they could not appoint legati under themselves, and the legati legionum, or in later times the legati iuridici, who assisted them in matters military and judicial, were appointed like themselves by the emperor. An en

tirely independent authority in the imperial provinces, within a certain limited department, was the procurator, who had the sole charge of the financial affairs of the province-of everything in fact which related to the fiscus. Procuratores there were in the senatorial provinces to look after the interest of the fiscus there, and the emperor's private affairs, and in the Digest, i 18, 9 the proconsul is specially warned to keep clear of all fiscal matters; but it is in the imperial provinces that the procurator holds a really important post. To the native Britons the legatus and the procurator seem like two kings-the one with power over their lives, the other over their properties (Tac. Agric. 15). Too often the legate and the procurator were on unfriendly terms. Nero had to send Polyclitus to compose a quarrel in Britain between Suetonius Paulinus and the procurator Classicianus, while it is mentioned of Agricola as something noteworthy that he had no such quarrel. It was not even unknown for the emperor to use the procurator as an instrument against and a spy upon the doings of the legate (Suet. Galb. 9). That the imperial provinces were well administered there can be little doubt. On not more than two or three occasions shall we find any of the imperial legates accused by the provincials, and though from their position at the head of considerable armies, they might at exceptional crises be the cause of civil war, in ordinary times and under efficient emperors this was a danger which in the first two centuries need hardly be taken into account.

As we should expect, the provinces welcomed this change of system (Tac. Ann. i 2, 'Neque provinciae illum rerum statum abnuebant'), in which both the motives and to some extent the opportunities of wrong-doing were taken away. A fixed salary was now given to all provincial governors (Dio Cass. 53, 15; 52, 23; Tac. Agric. 42; Ann. xv 19) sufficient to make provincial posts desirable apart from any opportunity of illicit gain, while, as an additional safeguard, it was made the rule in the second century that no one should be the governor of the province in which he had been born (Dio Cass. 71, 31), or, as is at any rate true at the end of the first century, in which he had served as military tribune. It must be added that the personal supervision of the emperor was immensely facilitated by the systematic construction of roads

which began with Augustus, and also by the postal system which he instituted along them. By these means, as we find in Pliny's correspondence with Trajan, the smallest details might, if it was considered advisable, be laid before the emperor for his decision.

Only second in importance to this preventive organisation of the provinces were the remedial measures for instances of power abused which might from time to time occur. The cases of Licinius in Gaul (Dio Cass. 54, 21) and Lollius in Armenia (Vell. Paterc. ii 101) speedily proved that some such remedies must be kept in reserve. In the provinces new facilities of communication with the emperor were afforded by the establishment of the provincial synods, or 'consilia,' or 'ková,' which met annually for religious celebrations at the altar of Rome and Augustus. In these not only might votes of thanks be passed to deserving governors (Tac. Ann. xv 20; Plin. Panegyr. 70), like the laudations of republican days (Cic. Verr. ii 5, 26; iv 9, 63; pro Flacc. 15; ad Div. iii 8), a practice only temporarily forbidden by Nero (Ann. xv 21), but accusations might be formulated and legates appointed to conduct them on behalf of the provinces at Rome.

The procedure in such cases was based, as has been already stated, on the lex Iulia de repetundis of 59 B.C. But the offences included under repetundae received throughout the empire a very considerable extension. The charge henceforth, instead of relating solely, or even primarily, to monetary matters, was a general accusation, 'male administratae provinciae' (Tac. Ann. vi 29), and included cruelty and oppression of every kind. The quaestio de repetundis, though not formally abolished, was practically no longer able to cope with the complexity which charges of repetundae now often assumed; for it was the essential principle of the quaestiones that each should deal with its own special offence, whether de vi, or de veneficiis, or de ambitu, or whatever it was. At first Augustus seems to have constituted a special commission of consulars to try charges against provincial governors (Suet. Aug. 73), 'et provincialium (appellationes delegabat) consularibus viris quos singulos cujusque provinciae negotiis praeposuit'; but if the passage is to be so explained, this plan was soon given up, and the senate, or strictly speaking, the consuls presiding over the senators as iudices, became the usual tribunal before which