of relief. In the first place he stopped absolutely the drain on the yearly income which had been occasioned by the illegal exactions of his predecessors. The burden of these may be guessed from the fact[1] that the island of Cyprus alone had been compelled to pay Appius two hundred Attic talents (£50,000) under the threat that otherwise he would billet his troops upon them. Secondly[2] Cicero looked into the local budgets of the States, and found that the Greek magistrates had been in the habit of systematically robbing the exchequers. The proconsul does not seem to have felt much scruple in compounding the felony. He made the defaulters disgorge all that they had embezzled for the last ten years, under promise that no further proceedings should be taken against them. By these means enough was realised to pay off all the arrears due to the tax-farmers, who were beginning to be seriously alarmed about their money. "For this," he says, "I have become as dear to them as the apple of their eye." With Cicero's views as to the "harmony of the orders," it was very necessary that he should be on good terms with the tax-farmers. They submitted, we find, with a good grace to the cutting off of their usurious interest, and Cicero' repaid them, "full measure and running over with complimentary speeches and invitations to dinner." He sums up his relations with them in answer to Atticus' inquiries"—I pet them, and show them attentions, I make much of them in the way of praise and compliments;
