As soon as Belisarius had occupied a town, his treasurer summoned all free citizens to the Curia or to the Forum; ordered them to divide themselves into six classes according to their wealth, and then called upon each class to value the property of the class above it.
According to this valuation, the imperial officials then laid the highest possible tax upon each class.
And, as these officials were almost necessitated, because of the retention and curtailment of their never punctually paid salaries, to think of filling their own pockets as well as the Emperor's treasury, the oppression they put in practice became intolerable.
They were not content with the high rates which the Emperor required to be paid in advance for three years; the special tax laid upon every liberated town of Italy as a "gratitude tax"--besides the large contributions and requisitions which Belisarius and his generals were obliged to demand for the use of the army--for neither gold nor provisions came from Byzantium--but every official sought to extort special payments, by special means, out of the richer citizens.
They everywhere ordered a revision of the tax-lists, discovered arrears owing since the times of the Gothic Kings, even from the days of Odoacer, and left the citizens the option of paying immense sums for indemnity or of carrying on a ruinous lawsuit with Justinian's fiscus, who scarcely ever lost one.
But if the tax-lists were incomplete or destroyed--which happened often enough in those times of war--the accountants arbitrarily reconstructed them.
In short, all the arts of finance which had ruined the provinces of the Eastern Empire were practised in Italy, after the landing of Belisarius, as far as imperial arms could reach.
Without consideration for the misery of war-time, the tax executors unyoked the oxen of the peasant from the plough, took his tools from the workshop of the artisan, and his wares from the house of the merchant.
In many towns the people rebelled against their oppressors and drove them away; but they only returned in larger numbers with severer measures.
The Mauretanian horsemen of Justinian, with African bloodhounds, hunted the desperate peasants from their hiding-places in the woods, whither they had fled to escape the tax-gatherer. And Cethegus, who alone was in a position to check such deeds, looked on with calculating coolness.