Procopius

“ But when those who at some later time succeeded them in office were able to surpass these men by a very wide margin, men wondered among themselves how it was that those who formerly seemed most base were now outdone by their successors to such a degree that they now seemed to have been men of high character in their dealings, and the third group, in turn, overshot the second in every manner of wickedness, and after them still others, by their innovations in crime, caused an honourable name to be attached to their predecessors. ”

“ And the denouncers kept harassing the more respectable farmers by holding over them the threat of an accusation, alleging that they had for a long time been paying their tax at a lower rate than that imposed upon their district. For the poor wretches had to fear not only the new payment of the tax, but also the possibility that they might be weighed down by the burden of taxes for so great a number of years for which they owed nothing. In any case, many men actually handed over their property either to the blackmailers or to the Treasury and went their ways. ”

“ And the result of this practice has proved unfortunate for all concerned — first, for the State in that the number of soldiers in active service is always deficient; secondly, for the surviving soldiers, in that they are elbowed out by those who have died long before and so find themselves left in a position inferior to what they deserve, and that they receive a pay which is lower than if they had the rank to which they are entitled; and, finally, for the Logothetes, who all this time have had to apportion to Justinian a share of the soldiers' money. ”

“ He decided that he would no longer sell, as formerly, those offices which he considered most valuable both in Byzantium and the other cities, but he sought out hired agents and put them in office, instructing them, for a wage of whatever it was, to deliver to him all their plunder. And they, having taken their pay, proceeded to collect and carry off everything from the whole country quite fearlessly, and a hireling authority was thus going the rounds and, in the guise of the office, plundering the subjects. ”

“ Thus time, by continuously promoting the soldiers who are lower down in the scale to the rank of those who have died or been discharged from the army, regulates on the basis of seniority the payments to be made from the Treasury to each man. But the Logothetes, as they are called, would not allow the names of the deceased to be removed from the rolls, even when great numbers died at one time from other causes, and especially, as was the case with the most, in the course of the numerous wars. ”

“ For a bargain was straightway concluded between him and the man who had paid down the price of the office that gave the latter full licence to plunder and pillage. Thus from the capital of the State there issued the traffic in human lives, and there Peter negotiated the contract for the destruction of the cities, while in the highest courts and in the public square of the market-place there paraded a legalized brigand, who described his business as the recouping of the monies put up as the price of office, there being no hope that his misdeeds ever would be punished. ”

“ Furthermore, though the Medes and Saracens had plundered the greater part of the land of Asia, and the Huns and Sclaveni and Antae the whole of Europe, and some of the cities had been levelled to the ground, and others had been stripped of their wealth in very thorough fashion through levied contributions, and though they had enslaved the population with all their property, making each region destitute of inhabitants by their daily inroads, yet he remitted the tax to no man, with the single exception that captured cities had one year's exemption only. ”

“ The owners of property are compelled to provision the Roman army in proportion to the tax levied upon each owner, the deliveries being made, not where the season of the year at which the requisition is to be filled permits, but where the officials find it possible and have determined, and in making these requisitions no enquiry is made to see whether the farmers happen to have the required provisions on their land. ”

“ For this is a tax on lands that have become abandoned or unproductive, the owners and farmers of which have already had the misfortune either to perish altogether or, abandoning their ancestral estates, to be now living in wretchedness because of the woes imposed upon them by reason of these imposts; and they do not hesitate to impose it upon any who have not yet been ruined altogether. ”

“ For those who have achieved this high rank a salary has been assigned from of old, so huge that each year they gather in more than one hundred centenaria of gold, and it has come about that not only they themselves are cared for in old age but that many others also share with them, as a general thing, the assistance derived from this source, and the affairs of the State have in this way advanced to a high point of prosperity. ”

“ All these evils kept constantly afflicting the people during the reign of Justinian and Theodora, for it so happened that neither war nor any other of the greatest calamities subsided during this time. And since we have made mention of rooms for billeting, we must not pass over the fact that the owners of the houses in Byzantium, having to turn over their dwellings there as lodgings for barbarians to the number of about seventy thousand, not only could derive no benefit from their own property, but were also afflicted by these other disagreeable conditions. ”

“ And many a time, when a hostile army of Huns had enslaved and plundered the Roman domain, the generals of Thrace and Illyricum, after purposing to attack the retreating enemy, recoiled when they saw a letter from the Emperor Justinian forbidding them to make the attack upon the barbarians, they being necessary to the Romans as allies against the Goths, it might be, or against some other enemy. ”

“ Picking out the basest men, he would sell to them at a great price the offices that were to be corrupted by them; for no man of decency or any degree of intelligence would think for a moment of paying out his own money in order to buy the privilege of plundering those who had done no wrong. ”

“ Thus it comes about that these wretched men are compelled to import provisions for both soldiers and horses, buying them all at very much higher prices than they are to receive, and that, too, in a market which, if it so happens, may be at a great distance from their farms, and then to haul back these provisions to the place where the army chances to be, and they must measure out these supplies to the Quartermasters of the army, not in the way accepted by all the world, but just as the Quartermasters wish. ”

“ The Roman Emperors in earlier times stationed a very great multitude of soldiers at all points of the Empire's frontier in order to guard the boundaries of the Roman domain, particularly in the eastern portion, thus checking the inroads of the Persians and the Saracens ”

“ And often some of the farmers of that region, moved by the loss of their children and women, who had been reduced to slavery, gathered in a body, attacked the retreating foe, and succeeded in slaying many of them and in capturing their horses together with all the booty; then, however, they found themselves involved in serious difficulties. For certain men, sent out from Byzantium, saw fit to maul and mutilate their bodies and to impose fines upon them without the least compunction, until they gave up all the horses which they had wrested from the barbarians. ”

“ This seemed to the people altogether impossible and out of the question. For it was not possible for the importing merchants, having bought these cargoes at a higher price, to sell them to the dealers for less. Therefore they no longer cared to engage in the importation of this stuff, and they gradually disposed of the remainder of their cargoes by rather furtive methods, selling no doubt to certain of the notables who found a satisfaction in making a shew of such finery through the lavish expenditure of their money — or, in a certain sense, they were obliged to do so. ”

“ And this is the thing which is called "buying on requisition," and the result of it has been that all the owners of farms have been bled to death. For by this process they are compelled to pay their annual tax not less than tenfold, seeing that it has often fallen to their lot, not only to furnish supplies directly to the army, as stated, but also, on top of what they have suffered that way, to transport grain to Byzantium ”

“ And he gave them the title of "Logothetes." And these each year devised the following scheme. According to a law the military pay is not given to all alike year after year, but when the men are still young and have only recently joined the army, the rate is lower, while for those who have been in service and are now at about the middle of the muster-roll, it grows larger. ”

“ But since the time when this man took over the administration of the State, he has neither done such a thing nor purposed to do it, though a period of thirty-two years has passed already, so that men have even come to forget this practice to some extent. ”

“ For she too from childhood on had consorted with magicians and sorcerers, her habits of life seeming to lead her in this direction, and throughout her life she retained her faith in such things and always based her confidence upon them. ”

“ Furthermore, they kept grinding down the soldiers with many other forms of penalties, as though to requite them thus for the dangers incurred in the wars, charging some with being "Greeks," as though it were wholly impossible for any man from Greece to be a decent man, others with being in the service without an order from the Emperor, even though they could shew, on this point, an imperial order, which, however, the Logothetes with no hesitation had the effrontery to denounce ”