The civil wars ended, the government of Rome turns its attention to the provinces anew, but for another reason.  Saint Jerome tells us that in 25 B.C., Augustus increased the tribute from the Gauls:  we find no difficulty in getting at the reason of this fact.  The thing most urgent after the re-establishment of peace was the re-arrangement of finance; that signified then, as always, an increase of imposts:  but more could not be extorted from the Oriental provinces, already exhausted by so many wars and plunderings; therefore the idea to draw greater revenues from the European provinces of recent conquest, particularly from Gaul, which until then had paid so little.  So you see a-forging one link after another in the chain:  Caesar for a political interest conquers Gaul; thirty years afterward Augustus goes there to seek new revenues for his balance-sheet; thence-forward there are always immediate needs that urge Roman politics into Gallic affairs:  and so it is that little by little Roman politics become permanently involved, by a kind of concatenation, not by deliberate plan.

We can easily follow the process.  Augustus had left in Gaul to exact the new tribute, a former slave of Caesar’s, afterward liberated,—­a Gaul or German whom Caesar had captured as a child in one of his expeditions and later freed, because of his consummate administrative ability.  It appears, however, that, for the Gauls at least, this ability was even too great.  In a curious chapter Dion tells us that Licinius, this freedman, uniting the avarice of a barbarian to the pretences of a Roman, beat down everyone that seemed greater than he; oppressed all those who seemed to have more power; extorted enormous sums from all, were they to fill out the dues of his office, or to enrich himself and his family.  His rascality was so stupendous that since the Gauls paid certain taxes every month, he increased to fourteen the number of the months, declaring that December, the last, was only the tenth; consequently it was necessary to count two more, one called Undecember and another, Duodecember.

I would not guarantee this story true, since, when there is introduced into a nation a new and more burdensome system of taxes, there are always set in circulation tales of this kind about the rapacity of the persons charged with collecting them:  but true or false, the tale shows that the Gauls were much irritated by the new tribute; indeed this irritation increased so much that in the winter from the year 15 till the year 14 B.C., Augustus, having to remain in Gaul on account of certain serious complications, arisen in Germany, was obliged to give his attention to it during his stay.  The prominent men of Gaul presented vigorous complaints to him against Licinius and his administration.  Then there occurred an episode that, recounted three centuries later with a certain naivete by Dion Cassius, has been overlooked by the historians, but which seems to me to be of prime interest in the history of the Latin world.  Dion writes: