Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/101

 offered; where such attacks were anticipated, the small farmers prepared for them, and with the aid of the local peasantry joined battle with the raiders. Thus the provinces were almost constantly the scene of a miniature warfare. In the midst of these disorders the Rector held the balance of justice and inclined the scale towards whoever weighted it with the heaviest bribe. Often, in fact, he was himself one of the worst offenders; and in his capacity as collector of the revenue, or under the pretence of giving police protection, he plundered and committed outrages in every direction throughout the country. And in such license he was

trying than the driving off of oxen, horses, and cattle in general, or even (to speak of small matters) of domestic fowl whence a multitude appeals to us here (CP.) daily; men, women, hustled from their homes, in beggary, sometimes to die here"; Nov. lxix, 1; cf. Edict viii.]) in every part of his province, to whom the Rector delegated his full powers, thus becoming a hundred-handed Briareus to rack the provincials; Nov. viii, 4; xvii, 10; cxxxiv, 1; Salvian, writing in the West, c. 450, complains that the Rector commits himself every crime which he sits to]*
 * [Footnote: priests, but mostly women," etc.; Nov. xxx, 5. "What can be more