There, as at Rome, the assembly of the
people was hardly more than a form; it is the senate--that is to say,
the nobility, that governs.
The centre of the provincial city was always a town, a Rome in
miniature, with its temples, its triumphal arches, its public baths,
its fountains, its theatres, and its arenas for the combats. The life
led there was that of Rome on a small scale: distributions of grain
and money, public banquets, grand religious ceremonies, and bloody
spectacles. Only, in Rome, it was the money of the provinces that paid
the expenses; in the municipalities the nobility itself defrayed the
costs of government and fetes. The tax levied for the treasury of the
emperor went entirely to the imperial chest; it was necessary, then,
that the rich of the city should at their own charges celebrate the
games, heat the baths, pave the streets, construct the bridges,
aqueducts, and circuses. They did this for more than two centuries,
and did it generously; monuments scattered over the whole of the
empire and thousands of inscriptions are a witness to this.
=The Imperial Regime.=--After the conquest three or four hundred
families of the nobility of Rome governed and exploited the rest of
the world.
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