Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/95

 to justify his elevation to the Emperor by the signal success of his methods; but he was no less intent on making his potent office inordinately profitable to himself. Every fiscal enactment which had ever passed into law was unearthed from the archives of the Empire, and applied factitiously to compass the transference of the money of the subject to the coffers of the state. The discovery of a name sufficed for the creation of a claim, and demands were issued for an endless succession of duties, tolls, tallages, censuals, cess, and customs, together with arrearages and apportionments of unpaid imposts, which foreshadowed the reduction of every possessor of property to a common level of indigence. All persons of means were noted by the agents of the fisc, and called on to pay according to the impression formed as to their resources. No excuses were accepted, protestations of inability were disbelieved, and, in order to meet the case of recalcitrant subjects, a torture chamber was fitted up in a secluded spot of the Praetorium. Here was collected an assortment of chains, manicles, pedicles, instruments of compression for the hands and feet, in short, every kind of apparatus which was suitable for subjecting the members to a state of painful strain or constraint. To this den defaulters