[226] Nov. viii, praef., 11, etc.
[227] "All can see that he who buys his office for gold, and that money borrowed at usury, must be beset by many whom he is obliged to satisfy from his province so that he may be liberated from debt," Ibid. "They (the Rectors) had to be rapacious and have but one thought, to satisfy creditors following them and threatening them on all sides. Thus our subjects have been sold," etc.; Nov. xxviii, 4.
[228] "He must also think of putting by something for the future when no longer in office"; Nov. viii, praef.
[229] Nov. cxxx; cf. cxxviii; Procopius, Anecd., 23, 30; Jn. Lydus, loc. cit., 61.
[230] Cod., II, xiv, xv, xvi; Nov. xvii, 15, etc.
[231] Cod., XI, liii; Nov. xvii, 13, 14, etc.; see p. 202.
[232] Nov. xxxii; xxxiii; xxxiv. "On account of the avarice of creditors who abuse the poverty of the times (535) and acquire the allotments of the unfortunate peasants, retaining all their property in return for a little sustenance, we enacted," etc. This (Nov. xxxiii) is addressed to the Praetorian Praefect of Illyricum, an official seldom heard of, who seems to have been almost destitute of political influence as compared with his potent colleague of the East.
[233] "We are almost ashamed to refer to the conduct of these. Men of great possessions, with what insolence they range the country; how they are served by guards, so that an intolerable crowd of men follow them; how daringly they pillage everybody, among whom are many priests, but mostly women," etc.; Nov. xxx, 5. "What can be more trying than the driving off of oxen, horses, and cattle in general, or even (to speak of small matters) of domestic fowl ... whence a multitude appeals to us here (CP.) daily; men, women, hustled from their homes, in beggary, sometimes to die here"; Nov. lxix, 1; cf. Edict viii.
[234] Nov. xvii, 2; lxxxv, passim; Edict viii, praef., etc.
[235] The conduct of Rectors is often described in detail. "They dismiss many culprits, selling to them their offences: very many innocent people they condemn in order to benefit obnoxious persons, and not only in money actions, but in criminal cases"; Nov. viii, praef. "We hear how unjustly the provincial judges act for the sake of lucre, declining their duties as to wills, attestation of facts, marriages, settlements, and even burials" (without bribes); Nov. cxxxiv, 3. "He abstained from no sort of actual depredation, plundered towns and returned to this happy city loaded with gold, leaving the region in the utmost poverty"; Edict xii. Also by giving a licence to agents: "They are not to despatch 'pursuers of brigands' or 'inhibitors of disorder,' rather to be called thieves and rioters who, using the occasion as a cloak, are guilty of the worst excesses"; Nov. viii, 12. "As to curators and tractators, we abolish the very names, looking back to the injuries they have inflicted in the past on the wretched tributaries"; Nov. xxx, 2. Another expedient was to plant deputies (vicarii, loci servatores, τοποτηρηταί) in every part of his province, to whom the Rector delegated his full powers, thus becoming a hundred-handed Briareus to rack the provincials; Nov. viii, 4; xvii, 10; cxxxiv, 1; Salvian, writing in the West, c. 450, complains that the Rector commits himself every crime which he sits to punish as a judge; and, what he thinks even worse, continues in the same courses after he has retired into the position of a rich and powerful private citizen; De Gubernat. Dei, vii, 21. For the benefit of readers not familiar with the Corpus Juris Civilis I may mention that in referring to "Novels" I am quoting Justinian's own words, or at least the Acts composed under his eye. Much of their text is clearly direct from his pen. But owing to the verbosity of the original I am sometimes obliged to condense.