Now since it was expected that a great number of tribes with greater forces would make head together, our cautious commander, weighing the doubtful issue of wars, was perplexed with great burdens of anxiety. So, thinking that during the truce, short though it was and full of business, some remedy might be found for the calamitous losses incurred by the land-holders, he set in order the system of taxation.

And whereas Florentius, the praetorian prefect, after having reviewed the whole matter (as he asserted) stated that whatever was lacking in the poll-tax and land-tax accounts he supplied out of special levies, Julian, knowing about such measures, declared that he would rather lose his life than allow it to be done.

For he knew that the incurable wounds of such arrangements, or rather derangementsThe 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 should suddenly become distrusted, when Augustus had conferred upon him the supreme charge of the state; Julian calmed him by his quiet manner, and by an exact and accurate computation proved that the amount of the poll-tax and land-tax was not only sufficient, but actually in excess of the inevitable requirements for government provisions.