tricts, in
which the several communities allied or privileged with immunity
were marked off as exempt from Roman customs. Thus Sicily even
from the Carthaginian period formed a closed customs-district, on
the frontier of which a tax of 5 per cent on the value was levied
from all imports or exports; thus on the frontiers of Asia there
was levied in consequence of the Sempronian law(10) a similar tax
of 21 per cent; in like manner the province of Narbo, exclusively
the domain of the Roman colony, was organized as a Roman customs-
district This arrangement, besides its fiscal objects, may have
been partly due to the commendable purpose of checking the
confusion inevitably arising out of a variety of communal tolls by
a uniform regulation of frontier-dues. The levying of the customs,
like that of the tenths, was without exception leased to middlemen.

Costs of Collection

The ordinary burdens of Roman taxpayers were limited to these
imposts; but we may not overlook the fact, that the expenses of
collection were very considerable, and the contributors paid an
amount disproportionately great as compared with what the Roman
government received. For, while the system of collecting taxes
by middlemen, and especially by general lessees, is in itself
the most expensive of all, in Rome effective competition was
rendered extremely difficult in consequence of the slight
extent to which the lettings were subdivided and the immense
association of capital.

Requisitions

To these ordinary burdens, however, fell to be added in the first
place the requisitions which were made. The costs of military
administration were in law defrayed by the Roman community.
It provided the commandants of every province with the means of
transport and all other requisites; it paid and provisioned the
Roman soldiers in the province. The provincial communities had to
furnish merely shelter, wood, hay, and similar articles free of
cost to the magistrates and soldiers; in fact the free towns were
even ordinarily exempted from the winter quartering of the troops--
permanent camps were not yet known. If the governor therefore
needed grain, ships, slaves to man them, linen, leather, money,
or aught else, he was no doubt absolutely at liberty in time
of war--nor was it far otherwise in time of peace--to demand such
supplies according to his discretion and exigencies from the subject-
communities or the sovereign protected states; but these supplies
w