Lucius Lucullus likewise when governor of Asia Minor had directly cancelled a portion of the arrears of interest which had swelled beyond measure, and had for the remaining portion assigned to the creditors a fourth part of the produce of the lands of their debtors, as well as a suitable proportion of the profits accruing to them from house-rents or slave-labour.

We are not expressly informed that Caesar after the civil war instituted similar general liquidations of debt in the provinces; yet from what has just been remarked and from what was done in the case of Italy,( 89) it can hardly be doubted that Caesar likewise directed his efforts towards this object, or at least that it formed part of his plan.
While thus the Imperator, as far as lay within human power, relieved the provincials from the oppressions of the magistrates and capitalists of Rome, it might at the same time be with certaint expected from the government to which he imparted fresh vigour, that it would scare off the wild border-peoples and disperse the freebooters by land and sea, as the rising sun chases away the mist.

However the old wounds might still smart, with Caesar there appeared for the sorely-tortured subjects the dawn of a more tolerable epoch, the first intelligent and humane government that had appeared for centuries, and a policy of peace which rested not on cowardice but on strength.

Well might the subjects above all mourn along with the best Romans by the bier of the great liberator.
The Beginning of the Helleno-Italic State But this abolition of existing abuses was not the main matter in Caesar's provincial reform.

In the Roman republic, according to the view of the aristocracy and democracy alike, the provinces had been nothing but--what they were frequently called--country-estates of the Roman people, and they were employed and worked out as such.
This view had now passed away.