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In 149 was passed the
first of the long series of laws intended, but in vain, to check the
tendency of provincial governors to extort money from their subjects;
and as this law established for the first time a standing court to try
offences of this kind, the inference is inevitable that such offences
were common and on the increase.
The remarkable fact about this inpouring of wealth is its
extraordinary suddenness. Within the lifetime of a single individual,
Cato the Censor, who died an old man in 149 B.C., the financial
condition of the State and of individuals had undergone a complete
change. Cato loved to make money and knew very well how to do it, as
his own treatise on agriculture plainly shows; but he wished to do it
in a legitimate way, and to spend profitably the money he made, and
he spared no pains to prevent others from making it illegally and
spending it unprofitably. He saw clearly that the sudden influx of
wealth was disturbing the balance of the Roman mind, and that the
desire to make money was taking the place of the idea of duty to the
State.


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