Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/185

 gathering in of the annones or canon of provisions, which included corn, wine, oil, flesh, and every other necessary for the support of the army and the free distributions to the urban populace, began. Delivery was enjoined in three instalments at intervals of four months, but payments in gold were not enforced until the end of the year. The Exactors, who waited on the tributaries to urge them to performance, were usually decurions or apparitors of the Rector. The Imperial constitutions directed with studied benignity that no ungracious demeanour should be adopted towards the tax-*payers, that no application should be made on Sundays, that they should not be approached by opinators, that is, by soldiers in charge of the military commissariat, that they should, when possible, be allowed the privilege of autopragias or voluntary delivery, and that, if recalcitrant, they should not be sent to prison or tortured, but allowed their liberty under formal arrest. Only in the last resource was anything of their substance seized as a pledge, to be sold "under the spear" if unredeemed, but in general any valid excuse was accepted and the tributaries were allowed to run into arrears.[10] Consonantly, however, to the prevailing principle every effort was made by the Exactors to amass the full precept from the locality, and those who could pay were convened to make up for the defaulters.[11] The actual receivers of the