Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/135

 economies effected by the suppression of pay and pensions usually granted by a state and to forfeitures of private property constantly decreed on slight pretexts.

If Justinian's studied scheme of reform could have been applied successfully in practice, it is possible that fiscal oppression might have been banished from the Empire. But the Autocrator at Constantinople was scarcely more than a suzerain in the provinces, and his fiat was but slightly regarded by those who occupied any position of power in districts remote from the capital. Doubtless his technical enactments as to the rank and territorial jurisdiction of diverse Rectors were received as indisputable, but at the same time they marked the limits of his power to work a change in methods of local rule which had been practised for centuries. Once invested with authority, the provincial governor departed to tread in the footsteps of his prede-*"; Edict xiii, praef.]