Res Gestae

For he knew that the incurable wounds of such arrangements, or rather derangements[*](The words provisionum and eversionum seem to be chosen for the sake of a word-play. He means that the arrangement proposed would amount to confiscation and the ruin of the province.) (to speak more truly) had often driven provinces to extreme poverty—a thing which (as will be shown later) was the complete ruin of Illyricum.[*](See xix. 11, 2 ff.)

For this reason, though the praetorian prefect exclaimed that it was unbearable that he

But when long afterwards an increase of taxation was nevertheless proposed to him, he could not bring himself to read it or sign it, but threw it on the ground. And when he was advised by a letter of Augustus, after the prefect’s report, not to act so meticulously as to seem to discredit Florentius, he wrote back that it would be a cause for rejoicing if the provincials, harried as they were on every side, might at least have to furnish only the prescribed taxes, not the additional amounts, which no tortures could wring from the poverty-stricken. And so it came to pass then and thereafter, that through the resolution of one courageous spirit no one tried to extort from the Gauls anything beyond the normal tax.