to the treasury, so that those who were in
difficulties and had no means of settling these arrears might not be
continually pressed, and that the tax collectors might not have an
excuse for vexatiously attempting to exact money from those liable to
tribute, where in many cases it was not due. Justinian, however, for
thirty-two years made no concession of the kind to his subjects, the
result of which was that the poor people were forced to quit the
country without any hope of return. The more honest were perpetually
harassed by these false accusers, who threatened to charge them with
having paid less than the amount at which they were rated. These
unhappy individuals were less afraid of the imposition of new taxes
than of the insupportable weight of the unjust exactions which for
many years they had been compelled to pay, whereupon many of them
abandoned their property to their accusers or to the rise.

The Medes and Saracens had ravaged the greater part of Asia, and the
Huns and Slavs had plundered the whole of Europe. Cities had been
razed to the ground or subjected to severe exactions; the inhabitants
had been carried away into slavery with all they possessed, and every
district had been deserted by its inhabitants in consequence of the
daily inroads. Justinian, however, remitted no tax or impost to any
one of them, except in the case of cities that had been taken by the
enemy, and then only for a year, although, had he granted them
exemption for seven years, as the Emperor Anastasius had done, I do
not think that even then he would have done enough: for Cabades
retired after having inflicted but little damage upon the buildings,
but Chosroes, by ravaging the country with fire and sword and razing
all its dwellings to the ground, brought greater calamities upon the
inhabitants. Justinian only granted this absurd remission of tribute
to these people and to others who had several times submitted to an
invasion of the Medes and the continuous depredations of the Huns and
Saracen barbarians in the East, while the Romans, settled in the
different parts of Europe, who had equally suffered by the attacks of
the barbarians, found Justinian more cruel than any of their foreign
foes; for, immediately after the enemy withdrew, the proprietors of
estates found themselves overwhelmed with requisitions for
provisions,[13] impositions,[14] and edicts[15] of various kinds, the
meaning of which I will now explain. Those who possessed