[Illustration: SOLIDUS OF MAXIMIN DAZA.] [Illustration: SOLIDUS OF LICINIUS I.] [Illustration: SOLIDUS OF LICINIUS II.] [Illustration: DOUBLE SOLIDUS OF CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.] The land tax, of course, was not the only one, for the theory of Imperial finance was that everybody and everything should pay. Constantine did not spare his new aristocracy. Every member of the senatorial order paid a property tax known as “the senatorial purse” (_follis senatoria_), and another imposition bearing the name of _aurum oblaticium_, which was none the more palatable because it was supposed to be a voluntary offering. Any senator, moreover, might be summoned to the capital to serve as prætor and provide a costly entertainment—a convenient weapon in the hands of autocracy to clip the wings of an obnoxious ex-official. Another ostensibly voluntary contribution to the Emperor was the _aurum coronarium_, or its equivalent of a thousand or two thousand pieces of gold, which each city of importance was obliged to offer to the sovereign on festival occasions, such as the celebration of five or ten complete years of rule. Every five years, also, there was a _lustralis collatio_ to be paid by all shopkeepers and usurers, according to their means. This was usually spoken of as “the gold-silver” (_chrysargyrum_), and, like “the senatorial purse,” is said by some authorities to have been the invention of Constantine himself. Zosimus, in a very bitter attack on the fiscal measures of the Emperor, declares that even the courtesans and the beggars were not exempt from the extortion of the treasury officials, and that whenever the tribute had to be paid, nothing was heard but groaning and lamentation. The scourge was brought into play for the persuasion of reluctant taxpayers; women were driven to sell their sons, and fathers their daughters. Then there were the _capitatio humana_, a sort of poll-tax on all labourers; the old five per cent. succession duty; an elaborate system of octroi (_portoria_), and many other indirect taxes. We need not, perhaps, believe the very worst pictures of human misery drawn by the historians, for, in fairness to the Emperors, we must take some note of the roseate accounts of the official rhetoricians. Nazarius, for example, explicitly declares that Constantine had given the Empire “peace abroad, prosperity at home, abundant harvests, and cheap food.”[148] Eusebius again and again conjures up a vision of prosperous and contented peoples, living not in fear of the tax-collector, but in the enjoyment of their sovereign’s bounty. But we fear that the sombre view is nearer the truth than the radiant one, and that the subsequent financial ruin, which overtook the western even more than the eastern provinces, was largely due to the oppressive and wasteful fiscal system introduced and developed by Diocletian and Constantine, and to the old standing defect of Roman administration, that the civil governor was also the judge, and