Gaius Verres joked that he needed three years in the post . . .

From War! What Is It Good For? by Ian Morris. Page 41.

A government strong enough to stamp out wrongdoing, the empire’s subjects learned, was also a government strong enough to do even greater wrong.

Some Roman officials exploited this to the full, but—as usual in Roman history—the worst crimes date to the first century B.C., when central government was at its weakest. Gaius Verres, who governed Sicily between 73 and 71 B.C., joked that he needed three years in the post—the first to steal enough to get rich, the second to steal enough to hire good lawyers, and the third to steal enough to bribe a judge and jury. Verres proceeded to “do all three, beating, jailing, and even crucifying those who would not pay him.

All, though, for naught. Marcus Cicero made his name prosecuting Verres, who only escaped conviction by fleeing into exile. Over the next two centuries, prosecuting corrupt officials became the standard way for young lawyers in a hurry to get ahead, and even though villains with friends in high places regularly got off, new laws steadily narrowed the scope for using violent extortion.

The empire that Rome’s wars created was no utopia, but the tone of the mass of surviving writings (by Romans and provincials alike) does suggest that it made its subjects safer than they would have been without it. And it also, apparently, made them richer. With pirates and bandits suppressed, trade boomed. To move its armies and fleets around, the government built state-of-the-art roads and harbors, which merchants used too. In return, Rome taxed the traders and spent most of the money it raised on the armed forces.