The general expenses of administering the Empire were not as great as modern analogies would lead us to suppose. No doubt the imperial legates and procurators received wages out of the imperial fiscus. It is commonly stated that all provincial magistrates now received a fixed salary instead of being left to plunder the provincials. The truth is that the higher magistrates of Rome never had received and did not for a long time yet receive a salary. But they had always claimed an allowance for their travelling expenses technically called “mule and tent money,” and this had been fixed on a generous scale which really amounted in practice to a salary. The only change was that instead of allowing these fees to be subject to contract on the regular contract system of the republican treasury, the governors now received a fixed grant calculated according to the necessary scale of expenses in the various provinces. For the provinces an immense saving was effected in this manner but it must have been more expensive to the central treasury. The finances of the provinces were gradually brought into order and arranged with consummate skill. The little information that we possess tends to show that nowhere was the Augustan reformation more beneficent or more brilliantly successful. In Gaul the land-tax and property-tax were fixed in 26 on a fairly high scale, it is true, but the development of commerce and agriculture fostered by the Romans made their incidence a light burden in comparison with the rapidly increasing wealth of the province. By this time the state had accepted the theory of tribute which the Roman lawyers had developed upon false principles. Tribute was now regarded, not as a commutation of the liability to military service, which was its real origin, but as a rent paid to Rome for the continued enjoyment of lands which had passed to her by right of conquest. The tribute was everywhere reassessed upon a new valuation systematically conducted. Generally it represented a tithe of the corn harvest and 20 per cent. of liquid products, such as oil and wine. In the senatorial provinces the old system of tax-farming by contractors survived for a time, but in his own provinces Augustus instituted an imperial board of revenue administered by Roman knights or Greek slaves and freedmen as his fiscal procurators. We have, indeed, three known cases of embezzlement by native agents. One, Eros, had advertised his insolent rapacity in Egypt by purchasing a celebrated fighting quail for an immense sum of money, and then cooking it for his dinner. Another, Licinius, a native Gaul set to collect taxes in his own country, disarmed Cæsar’s wrath like the servant in the parable by showing rooms full of silver and gold, which he professed to have stored up in his master’s interest. In this case it is zealous extortion which is charged against him. One of his methods was to extort fourteen months’ taxes in the year by pointing out to the