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Quote of the day: Urgulania's influence, however, was so f
Notes
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Agricola by Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Chapter 19: Agricola in Britain (cont.)[AD 78-94]
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Next, with thorough insight into the feelings of his province, and taught also, by the experience of others, that little is gained by conquest if followed by oppression, he [Note 1] determined to root out the causes of war. Beginning first with himself and his dependants, he kept his household under restraint, a thing as hard to many as ruling a province. He transacted no public business through freedmen or slaves; no private leanings, no recommendations or entreaties of friends, moved him in the selection of centurions and soldiers, but it was ever the best man whom he thought most trustworthy. He knew everything, but did not always act on his knowledge. Trifling errors he treated with leniency, serious offences with severity. Nor was it always punishment, but far oftener penitence, which satisfied him. He preferred to give office and power to men who would not transgress, rather than have to condemn a transgressor. He lightened the exaction of corn and tribute by an equal distribution of the burden, while he got rid of those contrivances for gain which were more intolerable than the tribute itself. Hitherto the people had been compelled to endure the farce of waiting by the closed granary and of purchasing corn unnecessarily and raising it to a fictitious price. Difficult byroads and distant places were fixed for them, so that states with a winter-camp close to them had to carry corn to remote and inaccessible parts of the country, until what was within the reach of all became a source of profit to the few.

Note 1: he = Agricola

Event: Agricola in Britain

Ceterum animorum provinciae prudens, simulque doctus per aliena experimenta parum profici armis, si iniuriae sequerentur, causas bellorum statuit excidere. A se suisque orsus primum domum suam coercuit, quod plerisque haud minus arduum est quam provinciam regere. Nihil per libertos servosque publicae rei, non studiis privatis nec ex commendatione aut precibus centurionem militesve adscire, sed optimum quemque fidissimum putare. Omnia scire, non omnia exsequi. Parvis peccatis veniam, magnis severitatem commodare; nec poena semper, sed saepius paenitentia contentus esse; officiis et administrationibus potius non peccaturos praeponere, quam damnare cum peccassent. Frumenti et tributorum exactionem aequalitate munerum mollire, circumcisis quae in quaestum reperta ipso tributo gravius tolerabantur. Namque per ludibrium adsidere clausis horreis et emere ultro frumenta ac luere pretio cogebantur. Divortia itinerum et longinquitas regionum indicebatur, ut civitates proximis hibernis in remota et avia deferrent, donec quod omnibus in promptu erat paucis lucrosum fieret.