and most of the new senators came from the provinces. Th ese
new senators paid the treasury for the privilege of serving
Rome, and their position in Rome’s governing body brought
greater stability to the empire. Vespasian also increased taxes,
built up a surplus in the treasury, and used the money for
public works. He gave the provinces more rights and allowed
the army to recruit from Gaul and Spain instead of just Italy.
During the fi rst few centuries of the Common Era the
emperor continued to hold almost total power. He was the
rule maker and judge of the ultimate court. He was assisted
by an advisory body, the Consilium Principis (Council of the
First Citizen) drawn from Senators and nobles, and the Sen-
ate continued to meet, but ultimately the emperor retained
real power. Th e Praetorian Guard sometimes supported the
emperor but at other times worked against him. Provinces
continued to have governors, assisted by offi cials called
procurators. Very few real Romans were sent to govern, so
most provinces were really governed by local bodies. Roman
offi cials primarily concerned themselves with censuses and
tax collection. Local offi cials handled criminal justice, pub-
lic works, religious festivals, and diplomatic relations with
Romans.
Between 235 and 284 c.e. Rome descended into chaos.
Th e government had never satisfactorily decided what to
do about the succession of emperors, and this failure now
came home to roost. Various soldiers decided they wanted
to be emperor, and so for 50 years they fought over the offi ce.
Tw e n t y- fi ve diff erent soldier-emperors took control during
this period; all but two of them were murdered or died in bat-
tle, defending their positions. Citizens stopped participating
in government; barbarians encroached on the borders, and
the military did not stop them; and infl ation destroyed the
economy.
To a large extent, by the second and third centuries of
the Common Era the government in Rome was increasingly
irrelevant except in certain very specifi c ways. Th e Sen-
ate and magistrates continued to run the city itself, and the
emperor, through the army, guaranteed peace in the prov-
inces (for failed to do so, more and more). Th e bureaucracy
and especially public fi nance were handled at a very local
level throughout the empire. Local magistrates in each dis-
trict of each province—some of whom might have had Latin
titles like aedile or quaestor and others Greek or Egyptian
titles—oversaw local political aff airs, and detachments of Ro-
man soldiers kept the peace and handled recruiting for the
Roman legions. By the third century c.e. the Roman Empire’s
army was almost entirely made up by non-Romans and even
by non-Italians and non-Europeans.
Taxation under the empire was not handled by the Ro-
man government. Th e Roman quaestors auctioned off con-
tracts for taxation to private companies. Whichever company
bid the most money for the right to collect taxes in a particu-
lar province won the auction and became the tax collectors
for that province. In this way the state was paid a lump sum at
once and was spared the expense of a large bureaucracy. Th e
tax-collecting company, the publicani, then proceeded to tax
the inhabitants of their territory. Th is taxation was supposed
to be governed by laws. In theory, the publicani were sup-
posed to judge how much tax they could collect, legally, given
the size of a year’s harvest and base their bids to the Roman
treasury on that estimate. Companies of publicani tended,
however, to bid much too high—the Roman quaestors did not
complain—and then try to recoup their investment by seizing
far more from the citizens of a region than was legal. Th eo-
retically, the citizens could expect the provincial governor to
protect their rights and to enforce the law by means of the
soldiers at his command. But governors were easily bribed
or actively in league with the tax collectors. Th e injustice of
these practices, carried out far from the eyes of the Senate and
emperor of Rome, contributed much toward the dissolution
and collapse of the Roman Empire.
Corruption, more generally, undid good government,
as did, ironically, eff orts on the part of emperors to stem it.
In the second and third centuries c.e. almost every govern-
mental service required a bribe. As emperors and provincial
governors from time to time tried to quell this corruption by
punishing corrupt offi cials, the result was simply an increase
in the amount of money demanded of each bribe—magis-
trates came to assume that they would eventually be caught
and punished and so tried to collect as much illicit profi t as
possible before their careers ended. Taxation and corruption
eroded government at a local level, while the emperor’s eff orts
to manage the governance and defense of the vast empire be-
came increasingly diffi cult at the highest level.
Diocletian (285–312 c.e.) tried to make the Roman gov-
ernment more effi cient by dividing the empire into eastern
and western empires, each with its own emperor. Each em-
peror was called Augustus, and each Augustus had an assis-
tant emperor called Caesar, who was also his successor; this
solved the perennial problem of succession. Th is form of gov-
ernment was called a tetrarchy, or rule by four.
Th e tetrarchy worked well at fi rst, mainly because the
fi rst four rulers got along with one another, but it collapsed in
306 c.e. when Augustus Constantius Chlorus died. Over the
next several years diff erent men aspired to the throne, result-
ing in claims to places in the tetrarchy by fi ve or six people
at a time. Aft er a brief civil war, in 313 c.e. two Augustuses
divided the empire again. Constantine became Augustus of
the Western Roman Empire, and Licinius became Augustus
of the Eastern Roman Empire. Th is division lasted until 324
c.e., when Constantine defeated Licinius and became the
sole emperor in the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul,
Turkey). Constantine declared Christianity to be the Roman
state religion.THE AMERICAS
BY KEITH JORDAN
Conclusions about the nature of ancient Native American
governments are based for the most part on reconstruc-534 government organization: The Americas