The notion of honour in theft too was already developed; the big robber looked down on the little, and the latter on the mere thief, with contempt; any one, who had been once for a wonder condemned, boasted of the high figure of the sums which he was proved to have exacted.

Such was the behaviour in the provinces of the successors of those men, who had been accustomed to bring home nothing from their administration but the thanks of the subjects and the approbation of their fellow-citizens.
The Roman Capitalists in the Provinces But still worse, if possible, and still less subject to any control was the havoc committed by the Italian men of business among the unhappy provincials.

The most lucrative portions of the landed property and the whole commercial and monetary business in the provinces were concentrated in their hands.

The estates in the transmarine regions, which belonged to Italian grandees, were exposed to all the misery of management by stewards, and never saw their owners; excepting possibly the hunting-parks, which occur as early as this time in Transalpine Gaul with an area amounting to nearly twenty square miles.

Usury flourished as it had never flourished before.