In spite of this rigid suppression of spontaneity and freedom, which is seen also in Diocletian’s Edict fixing the prices throughout the empire, there is a gain in other directions. The ‘societates publicanorum’ ceased to exist, and the provincial was less exposed to capricious plunder, which in some cases, however, was removed only to admit organized robbery. Diocletian had levelled the inequality of taxation, but had not made an equal oppression impossible. Yet there was the boon of peace, and the genuine efforts to help provincials on the part of emperors like Julian. He greatly reduced the land tax[739] and administered justice in person, revising the decisions of judges, and summarily dismissing corrupt officials. The supply of slaves had palpably decreased, for wars of conquest had ceased, and the Germanic prisoners, having been found to be unmanageable, had been granted a certain amount of independence. We find that as much as two hundred ‘aurei’ was paid for a single slave; and if we are forced to conclude that the slave in question must have been of a very special kind, we must grant that even so the price had risen enormously. This meant that people had to fall back on their own resources more frequently: a local and provincial independence was fostered, and we have something more nearly approaching ‘natural economy’. Such was the system of which the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed the failure. As time went on taxes continued to be oppressive,[740] the bankruptcy that inevitably resulted from keeping an army continuously on a war footing became more apparent, and the security afforded by the empire became less and less. A weak ruler in a despotic state makes room for all manner of corruption, and under the weak emperors of the later empire this result is evident from ‘the frequent creation of new offices whose object was to curb the corruption of the old’.[741] When the imperial defence at length breaks down before the repeated waves of barbarian invasion, we feel that the severance of Gaul from an imperial government so rigid and so inelastic has merely been forestalled: it would have come in any case.