206 Imperial revenue 



and development was left to follow the lines of changing economic and 

 political needs. It is well to take a few important matters and see very 

 briefly how imperial policy set going tendencies that were in course of 

 time to affect profoundly the position of agriculture. 



In the first place it was clear that no stable reconstruction was 

 possible without a large and steady income. To this end a great reform 

 of the old methods of revenue-collection was necessary. The wasteful^ 

 system of tax-farmers practically unchecked in their exactions was 

 exchanged for collection by officials of the state or of municipalities. 

 In the case of land-revenue this change was especially momentous, 

 for in no department had the abuses and extortions of publicani been 

 more oppressive. And it was in the Emperor's Provinces that this 

 reform was first achieved. Agriculture was by far the most widespread 

 occupation of the subject peoples; and the true imperial interest was, >/ 

 not to squeeze the most possible out of them at a given moment, but / 

 to promote their continuous well-being as producers of a moderate but / 

 sure revenue. That this wise policy was deliberately followed is indi- 

 cated by the separate 1 treatment of Egypt. Augustus did not present 

 his new acquisition to the Roman state. He stepped into the position 

 of the late Ptolemies, and was king there without the name. As he 

 found the cash of Ptolemaic treasure a means of paying off debts and 

 avoiding initial bankruptcy, so by keeping up the existing financial 

 system he enjoyed year by year a large income entirely at his own 

 disposal, and avoided the risk of disturbing institutions to which the 

 native farmers had been used from time immemorial. The possession 

 of this vast private revenue undoubtedly had much to do with the suc- 

 cessful career of Augustus in establishing the empire. 



So long as the empire was secure from invasion, and the collection 

 of taxes on a fair and economical plan afforded sufficient and regular 

 returns, general prosperity prevailed over a larger area than ever before. 

 The boon of peace was to the subject peoples a compensation for the 

 loss of an independence the advantages of which were uncertain and 

 in most cases probably forgotten. If the benumbing of national feelings 

 was in itself not a good thing, the central government was able to pay 

 its way, and emperors could at need appear as a sort of benign provi- 

 dence, by grants of money or temporary remissions of taxation in relief 

 of extraordinary calamities. And yet, as we can now see in retrospect, 

 the establishment of the new monarchy had set in motion tendencies 

 that were destined to upset the social and economic structure and 

 eventually to give it a more Oriental character. Italy long remained a 



1 Tacitus ann II 59 seposuit Aegyptum hist in domi retinere. This need not be taken 

 to mean that he treated it strictly as part of his private estate, as Mommsen thought. See on 

 the controversy a note of E Meyer Kl Schr p 479. 



