only held office for a year. They were assisted in their duties by legati and quaestors who possessed an independent propraetoriam imperium. The proconsul of consular rank (attended by twelve lictors) had three legati (appointed by himself) and one quaestor at his side; he of praetorian rank (attended by six lictors) had one legatus and one quaestor.
The governors of the imperial provinces were entitled legati Augusti pro praetore. They were appointed by the Emperor, and their constitutional position was that the Emperor delegated to them his imperium. But only consulars or praetorians, and therefore only senators, could be appointed. Their term of governorship was not necessarily limited to a year, like that of the proconsuls, but depended on the will of the Emperor. The financial affairs of the imperial provinces were managed by procuratores, generally of equestrian tank, but sometimes freedmen. There were also, for jurisdiction, legati Augusti juridici of senatorial rank, but it is not certain whether they were instituted under Augustus.
But while the senate had no part in the administration of the imperial provinces, except in so far as the governors were chosen from among senators, the Emperor had powers of interfering in the affairs of the senatorial provinces by virtue of the imperium maius, which he possessed over other proconsuls. Moreover he could levy troops in the provinces of the senate, and exercise control over the taxation. Thus the supply of corn from Africa, a senatorial province, went to the Emperor, not to the senate. In both kinds of provinces alike the governors combined supreme civil and military authority; but the proconsuls had rarely, except in the case of Africa, military forces of any importance at their disposition.
Thus there were two sets of provincial governors, those who represented the senate and those who represented the Emperor. It might be thought, at first sight, that the senatorial governors would be jealous of the imperial, who had legions under them and a longer tenure of office. But this danger was obviated by the important circumstance that the legati were chosen from the same class as the proconsuls, and thus the same man who was one year proconsul of Asia, might the next year be appointed legatus of Syria.
In reviewing the provinces of the Roman Empire we may begin with the western, and proceed eastward. With the exception of Africa and Sardinia, there were no subject lands which Augustus did not visit, as Caesar, if not as Augustus. In 27 B.C. he went to Gaul, and thence to Spain, where he remained until 24 B.C., conducting the Cantabrian war. Two years later he visited Sicily, whence he proceeded to the East, Samos, Asia, and Bithynia, settled the Parthian question, and returned to Rome in 19 B.C.. In 16 B.C. he made a second visit to Gaul, in the company of Tiberius, and stayed in the Gallic provinces for three years. In 10 B.C. he visited Gaul again, and in 8 B.C. for the fourth time. Henceforward he did not leave Italy, but deputed the work of provincial organization to those whom he marked out to be his successors.
SECT. II. — 27 B.C.-14 A.D. THE THREE GAULS
Augustus divided Gallia into four provinces : Narbonensis, Aquitania, Lugudunensis, and Belgica. In 22 B.C.. he assigned Narbononsis to the senate, while the others remained under imperial legati.
Narbonensis had become a Roman province in 121 B.C. United with the rest of Gaul after the conquests of Julius Caesar, it was now restored to its separate being. Through the civil wars it became far more than the territory of Narbo; for the federate Greek state of Massilia, which possessed most of the coast-line, was reduced to the condition of a provincial town, and thereby Narbonensis extended from the Pyrenees to the Maritime Alps. The elder Caesar did much towards Romanizing this province. To him Narbo owed its strength and prosperity, and he founded new cities, possessing Roman citizenship, chief among them Arelate which as a commercial town soon took the place of her older Greek neighbor. The canton system of the Celts was gradually supersede in Narbonensis by the Italian system of city communities, and this development was zealously furthered by Augustus. In one interesting case we can see the process. The canton of the Volca; is first organized on the Italian principle under praetors (praetor Volcarum); the next step is that the canton of the Volcas is replaced by the Latin city Nemausus, which is now Nimes. The disappearance of the canton system distinguishes the southern province from the rest of Gaul, and is part of its conspicuously Roman character. This different degree of Romanization had probably a good deal to do with the marked differences between the lands of the langue d'oc and those of the langue d'oui. Yet the Celts of Narbonensis did not forget their national gods; the religion of the country survived long in the south as well as in the north.
Tres Galliae. The three imperial provinces were often grouped together as the “three Gauls”. This threefold division corresponded in general outline to the ethnical division, which Caesar marks at the beginning of his “Gallic War”. But it does not correspond wholly. The province of the south-west contains Iberian Aquitania, but with a Celtic addition. The Celtic land between the Liger and the Garumna is taken from Celtica and annexed to Aquitania. The province Lugudunensis answers to Caesa’s Celtica, but it no longer includes all the Celts. It has lost some on the south side to Aquitania, and others on the north to the third division, Belgica. Thus Belgica is no longer entirely Teutonic, but partly Teutonic and partly Celtic. These three districts seem at first to have been placed under the single control of a military governor, who commanded the legions stationed on the Rhine and had a legatus in each province. Drusus held this position from 13 to 9 B.C., and Tiberius succeeded him (9-7 B.C.). Again, from 13 to 17 A.D. we find Germanicus holding the same position. It is possible that in the intervening years this military control was suspended, and that the legati of the three provinces were independent of any superior but the Emperor, as they certainly were after 17 A.D.
In imperial Gaul the Roman government allowed the cantons to remain, and ordered their administration accordingly. The city system was not introduced in these provinces as in Narbonensis, and the progress of Romanization was much slower. There was a strong national spirit; the religion of the Druids was firmly rooted; and it was long felt by Roman rulers that the presence of armies on the Rhine was as needful to prevent a rebellion in Gaul as to ward off a German invasion. But no serious attempt was made by the Celts to throw off the yoke of their Roman lords. An Iberian rebellion in Aquitania was easily suppressed by Messalla Corvinus (about 27 B.C.), and perhaps belongs as much to the history of Spain as to that of Gaul. The Iberians north of the Pyrenees were probably in communication with their brethren of the south. The success of Messalla was rewarded by a triumph.
The four visits of Augustus to Gaul, which have been mentioned above, and that of Agrippa in 19 B.C., show how much the thoughts of the Emperor were filled with the task of organizing the country which his father had conquered and had not time to shape. On the occasion of his first visit he held a census of Gaul, the first Roman census ever held there, in order to regulate the taxes. It is remarkable that the policy adopted by Rome was not to obliterate, but to preserve a national spirit. Not only was the canton organization preserved, but all the cantons of the three provinces were yoked together by a national constitution, quite distinct from the imperial administration, though under imperial patronage. It was in the consulship of M. Messalla Barbatus and P. Quirinius (12B.C.), on the first day of August, that Drusus dedicated an altar to Rome and the genius of Augustus beneath the hill of Lugudunum, where the priest of the three Gauls should henceforward sacrifice yearly, on the same day, to those deities. The priest was to be elected annually by those whom the cantons of the three provinces chose to represent them in a national concilium held at Lugudunum. Among the rights of this assembly were that of determining the distribution of the taxes, and that of lodging complaints against the acts of imperial officials.
The city which was thus chosen to be the meeting-place of the Gallic peoples under Roman auspices, Lugudunum, stood above and apart from the other communities of imperial Gaul. She gave her name to one of the three provinces, and the governor of Lugudunensis dwelt within her walls; but she was far more than a provincial residence. Singular by her privileged position as the one city in the three Gauls which enjoyed the rights of Roman citizenship she may be regarded as the capital of all three, yet not belonging to any. Her exalted position resembles that of Rome in Italy rather than that of Alexandria in Egypt; it has also been compared to that of Washington in the United States. She and Carthage were the only cities in the western subject-lands in which as in Rome herself a garrison was stationed. She had the right of coining imperial gold; and we cannot assert this of any other western city. Her position,