arrears of taxation, even in districts which had suffered from hostile invasions or other calamities. Thus numbers of the small landowners were allowed to languish under the apprehension that at any moment their whole property might be seized in order to wipe out their liabilities.[1]
A river of wealth flowed through the Byzantine exchequer at the bidding of the Emperor. The sources were exhausted, and the reservoir was discharged under the influence of the same will. The people, who formed the well-head, suffered untold miseries in contributing under compulsion to the supply, but they possessed no control over the ultimate distribution of the stream. These activities have now been sufficiently considered on the one side; it remains for us to turn our attention to the other. During the twenty years which followed the Nika rebellion the reign of Justinian was distinguished by a series of magnificent achievements both at home and abroad; great works were accomplished within
- [Footnote: demon came to her"; Ibid. "That he was not a man, but a demon in
human form, any one could prove by the magnitude of the ills which he brought on the human race"; Ibid., 18. Jn. Lydus, however, always represents Justinian as being "good and kind," "long-suffering," etc., and as quite ignorant of the doings of John, who bullied his subordinates so that none of them would have dared to breathe a word against him; De Magistr., iii, 57, 69, etc. Lydus was a clerk in the civil service, who rose to be the head of a department, but he complains that he never received his pay; Ibid., 66, 67, etc.]
- ↑ Procopius, Anecd., 23. He made no concessions whatever, according to our author, writing in 550. His first, and apparently his only, remission of arrears was, in fact, not made till 553; Nov. cxlvii. Malala (p. 437) records that in 528 he abolished some tax, a subsidy to the Gothic foederati. The defaulting tax-payer was put on a level with the homicide, and denied the right of sanctuary in a church; Nov. xvii, 7. To the Rectors he says, "You must see that exaction of the public tributes be decently effected, even in the Temples . . . the ecclesiastics will aid you," etc.
