Augustus, like Cæsar before him, strove to remedy these evils to the best of his power. To reduce the hungry rabble in the capital he devised methods of emigration to the colonies and established settlements on property purchased out of the public funds; he restricted the number of recipients of corn by a careful scrutiny of the material circumstances of the applicants and by the exclusion of all aliens, non-citizens, and abusers of the public bounty. But all these restrictions were palliatives merely; the sources of misery were not stopped. The provisioning of the capital with cheap corn was one of the most onerous duties of the government. That he might more directly control the regular supply from the “grain provinces” of Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, Augustus caused the office of “cereal prefect,” which Pompey had once held, to be conferred upon himself, and then appointed a permanent bureau to manage and superintend the importation of corn, the markets, and the public storehouses from which the indigent populace monthly drew their fixed allowance on presentation of a counter. In times of scarcity and want, such as not unfrequently occurred, the distributions were made on a larger scale, and every joyful or propitious event was a welcome opportunity for the emperor to purchase the favour of the populace with gifts and pecuniary donations. Augustus devoted the same attention to other parts of the Italian peninsula. He endeavoured to recover waste districts for agriculture and industry by establishing settlements, and made use of rewards and privileges as inducements and incitements to energy. He cleared the country of robber bands by squadrons and armed watchmen, protected the coast towns from pirates, and by a careful examination of slave-tenements (_ergastula_) set at liberty all freeborn persons who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery by these roving gangs. With the establishment of the monarchy, Italy, like the provinces, entered upon a new life, and there also the restoration of security and order brought vigour and prosperity into being. The twenty-eight colonies which Augustus peopled, partly with veterans, and partly with Roman and Italian settlers of the poorer class, were furnished with a suitable legal and political status. Their municipal constitution was modelled on that of Rome, and served in its turn as a model for the other municipia and prefectures of the peninsula. Beside their local rights of citizenship they all possessed the _civitas_ or freedom of Rome; they all had the right of electing their officers and chief magistrates (_decuriones_) in the assembly of the people, the autonomous administration of communal property, freedom of worship according to their hereditary ritual and solemnities, and their own judicature according to Roman law; and any burgess removing to Rome ranked in all things on the same footing as the old freemen of the capital. The differences of legal status which at first prevailed