As to the burden of quartering troops, Roman statesmen themselves expressed the opinion that a town suffered nearly to the same extent when a Roman army took up winter quarters in it as when an enemy took it by storm.

While the taxation in its original character had been an indemnification for the burden of military defence undertaken by Rome, and the community paying tribute had thus a right to remain exempt from ordinary service, garrison-service was now--as is attested e.g.in the case of Sardinia--for the most part imposed on the provincials, and even in the ordinary armies, besides other duties, the whole heavy burden of the cavalry-service was devolved on them.
The extraordinary contributions demanded--such as, the deliveries of grain for little or no compensation to benefit the proletariate of the capital; the frequent and costly naval armaments and coast- defences in order to check piracy; the task of supplying works of art, wild beasts, or other demands of the insane Roman luxury in the theatre and the chase; the military requisitions in case of war-- were just as frequent as they were oppressive and incalculable.
A single instance may show how far things were carried.
During the three years' administration of Sicily by Gaius Verres the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to 120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80; so that in four of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent of the landholders preferred to let their fields lie fallow than to cultivate them under such government.

And these landholders were, as their small number itself shows and as is expressly stated, by no means small farmers, but respectable planters and in great part Roman burgesses! In the Client-States In the client-states the forms of taxation were somewhat different, but the burdens themselves were if possible still worse, since in addition to the exactions of the Romans there came those of the native courts.

In Cappadocia and Egypt the farmer as well as the king was bankrupt; the former was unable to satisfy the tax-collector, the latter was unable to satisfy his Roman creditor.
Add to these the exactions, properly so called, not merely of the governor himself, but also of his "friends," each of whom fancied that he had as it were a draft on the governor and a title accordingly to come back from the province a made man.

The Roman oligarchy in this respect completely resembled a gang of robbers, and followed out the plundering of the provincials in a professional and business-like manner; capable members of the gang set to work not too nicely, for they had in fact to share the spoil with the advocates and the jurymen, and the more they stole, they did so the more securely.