The theory of Roman taxation was in origin that it was a war indemnity. This accounts for the fact that in the early days of Rome’s dealings with conquered peoples a tax might be imposed even on nations which were declared free,[1502] and for the name _stipendium_ (“payment for the army”) which was borne by the direct taxation imposed by Roman commissioners on provincials.[1503] This equitable theory, that the taxes collected should merely defray the expenses of the military occupation and administration of a province, seems to have been realised in practice where the Roman government took the trouble to organise a system of its own. The Macedonians were made to pay but half of what they had paid to their kings,[1504] the Spanish provinces must have cost more than they brought in, and in Cicero’s time it was only the Asiatic provinces, where taxes were imposed on quite a different system, that yielded a surplus.[1505] It was this system, which the Romans found existing in Sicily, Sardinia, and Asia, and with their characteristic negligence elected to preserve, which changed the whole theory of Roman taxation. The principle was that of the payment by the cultivator (_arator_) of a tithe (_decuma_) of the produce of his land. It was inevitable that the Roman lawyer should associate this due with the _vectigal_ paid by the occupants of _ager publicus_, and should evolve from the comparison the strange theory that land in the provinces was not owned but merely “possessed” by its holders.[1506] The chief practical consequences of the tithe system were a surplus to the treasury, and the exactions of the middlemen (_publicani_) through the indirect system of collection which it involved. The direct tax (_stipendium_) was collected by a tribute assessed either on the land (_tributum soli_) or on the personalty of individuals (_tributum capitis_).[1507] The Romans of the Republic seem never to have attempted to form an accurate estimate of the resources furnished by the land and personal wealth of a province; doubtless in Hellenised districts they employed the systems which they found existing, such as the schedules which formed the bases of the εἰσφοραί: in Spain amongst other rough expedients they seem to have adopted a valuation tax on a proportion of the produce of the soil;[1508] while elsewhere, as in Macedonia,[1509] they fixed a total on the existing basis of collection. The direct tax was usually collected by the communes themselves and paid to the governor’s quaestor.