186 ACCUMULATED TREASURE CHAP. vin. 



the country could not enable the military to 

 extort, or at least not with the same facility as 

 it might be extracted by the slower but surer 

 operations of the fiscal commissioners in the 

 several provinces, whe*n they became subject to 

 the imperial government. Tributes, as we have 

 seen, were demanded and enforced with severity 

 on all the provinces : many of them were rich 

 as well in the precious metals as in those pro- 

 ductions of the soil which form the real wealth 

 of a country. Julius Caesar describes in his 

 Bello Gallico the flourishing condition and even 

 the opulence of Gaul at the time he invaded 

 that kingdom. The copious stores of metallic 

 wealth may be inferred from the vast treasures 

 amassed at Thoulouse, which, according to 

 Possidonius, on whom Strabo 1 chiefly relies, 

 amounted to fifteen thousand talents in gold and 

 silver bullion. The proportion of one of these 

 metals to the other does not appear ; but if it 

 had consisted wholly of silver, it would have 

 amounted to two millions and a half of our 

 money. If it had consisted altogether of gold, 

 it would have amounted, at the proportion which 

 one metal bore to the other at that period, to 

 the enormous sum of thirty millions. It is also 

 stated, that besides the gold and silver collected 

 in Thoulouse, there were in several of the other 



1 Strabo, lib. iv. 



