for the Gallic legions.  But considerable as were these demands made on the Roman exchequer, it would still have beenable probably to meet them, had not its administration once so exemplary been affected by the universal laxity and dishonesty of this age; the payments of the treasury were often suspended merely because of the neglect to call up its outstanding claims.  The magistrates placed over it, two of the quaestors—­young men annually changed—­contented themselves at the best with inaction; among the official staff of clerks and others, formerly so justly held in high esteem for its integrity, the worst abuses now prevailed, more especially since such posts had come to be bought and sold.

Financial Reforms of Caesar
Leasing of the Direct Taxes Abolished

As soon however as the threads of Roman state-finance were concentrated no longer as hitherto in the senate, but in the cabinet of Caesar, new life, stricter order, and more compact connection at once pervaded all the wheels and springs of that great machine. the two institutions, which originated with Gaius Gracchus and ate like a gangrene into the Roman financial system—­the leasing of the direct taxes, and the distributions of grain—­were partly abolished, partly remodelled.  Caesar wished not, like his predecessor, to hold the nobility in check by the banker-aristocracy and the populace of the capital, but to set them aside and to deliver the commonwealth from all parasites whether of high or lower rank; and therefore he went in these two important questions not with Gaius Gracchus, but with the oligarch Sulla.  The leasing system was allowed to continue for the indirect taxes, in the case of which it was very old and—­under the maxim of Roman financial administration, which was retained inviolable also by Caesar, that the levying of the taxes should at any cost be kept simple and readily manageable—­ absolutely could not be dispensed with.  But the direct taxes were thenceforth universally either treated, like the African and Sardinian deliveries of corn and oil, as contributions in kind to be directly supplied to the state, or converted, like the revenues of Asia Minor, into fixed money payments, in which case the collection of the several sums payable was entrusted to the tax-districts themselves.

Reform of the Distribution of Corn

The corn-distributions in the capital had hitherto been looked on as a profitable prerogative of the community which ruled and, because it ruled, had to be fed by its subjects.  This infamous principle was set aside by Caesar; but it could not be overlooked that a multitude of wholly destitute burgesses had been protected solely by these largesses of food from starvation.  In this aspect Caesar retained them.  While according to the Sempronian ordinance renewed by Cato every Roman burgess settled in Rome had legally a claim to bread-corn without payment, this list of recipients, which had at last risen to the number