s of expenditure must be named
in the first place the great cost of fitting out fleets, on which,
for example, five years after the great razzia of 687, 34,000,000
sesterces (340,000 pounds) were expended at once. Add to this
the very considerable sums which were consumed in wars and warlike
preparations; such as 18,000,000 sesterces (180,000 pounds)
paid at once to Piso merely for the outfit of the Macedonian army,
24,000,000 sesterces (240,000 pounds) even annually to Pompeius
for the maintenance and pay of the Spanish army, and similar sums
to Caesar for the Gallic legions. But considerable as were
these demands made on the Roman exchequer, it would still have
beenable probably to meet them, had not its administration once
so exemplary been affected by the universal laxity and dishonesty
of this age; the payments of the treasury were often suspended
merely because of the neglect to call up its outstanding claims.
The magistrates placed over it, two of the quaestors--young men
annually changed--contented themselves at the best with inaction;
among the official staff of clerks and others, formerly so justly held
in high esteem for its integrity, the worst abuses now prevailed,
more especially since such posts had come to be bought and sold.

Financial Reforms of Caesar
Leasing of the Direct Taxes Abolished

As soon however as the threads of Roman state-finance were concentrated
no longer as hitherto in the senate, but in the cabinet of Caesar,
new life, stricter order, and more compact connection at once pervaded
all the wheels and springs of that great machine. the two institutions,
which originated with Gaius Gracchus and ate like a gangrene
into the Roman financial system--the leasing of the direct taxes,
and the distributions of grain--were partly abolished,
partly remodelled. Caesar wished not, like his predecessor,
to hold the nobility in check by the banker-aristocracy
and the populace of the capital, but to set them aside and to deliver
the commonwealth from all parasites whether of high or lower rank;
and therefore he went in these two important questions
not with Gaius Gracchus, but with the oligarch Sulla. The leasing system
was allowed to continue for the indirect taxes, in the case of which
it was very old and--under the maxim of Roman financial administration,
which was retained inviolable also by Caesar, that the levying
of the taxes should at any cost be kept simple and readily manageable--
ab