The subject peoples gained incidentally by establishment of a despotism. Cicero hits the truth when he calls the provinces of Rome "Cæsar's estates." "Sardinia," he says,[1] "is the worst farm which Cæsar owns, but he does not neglect it for all that." It is clear that it could not be in the interests of a master that anyone except himself should shear his sheep. No despot, unless he were a man of feeble will and character would tolerate such vicegerents as we have seen the Roman Republic tolerate in Verres and Appius Claudius. It is recorded even of Domitian, that he kept the provincial governors from misdoing. We have no record of Cæsar's dealings with the proconsuls, but we may be sure that the control he exercised would be firm and intelligent. Thus in the mere abolition of the rule of persons who were members of a sovereign corporation and the substitution of governors, who were hardly less absolutely at the mercy of Cæsar the subjects over whom they ruled, a new guaranty was found for tolerable administration. The provincials soon learned to appreciate their own interests in these matters. They had mostly stood for Pompey against Cæsar, but they showed a very different temper when in the next Civil War Cæsarism was ranged against the Republic. By their experience of Cæsar's rule they had learned that their servitude was likely to be more endurable, if no freedom were left in the world to contrast with it.
The changes which I have been recording were not unimportant in themselves, but they are hardly
- ↑ Ad Fam., ix., 7, 2.
