Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/223

 made responsible for the full precept levied four-monthly on each district, and had to make good any deficiency from their own resources. As natives of the locality to which their activities were constrained, their intimate knowledge of the inhabitants was invaluable to the government in its inquisitorial and compulsive efforts to gather in the imposts; and, subordinated to the Imperial officials resident in, or on special missions to, the provinces, they became consequently the prime object of their assaults when dealing with the defaulting tributaries. In view of such hardships, municipal dignities and immunities were illusory; and, as the local senates were very numerous, there were few families among the middle classes, from whom those bodies were regularly replenished, whose members did not live in dread of a hereditary obligation to become a Decurion. In every ordinary sphere of exertion, not excepting the Court, the Church, or the army, men, long embarked on their career, were liable to receive a mandate enjoining them to return to their native town or village in order to spend the rest of their lives in the management of local affairs. Occupation of the highest offices of State, or