13.16. 16. Of the Conquests of the Mahometans.
It was this excess of taxes
[13]
that occasioned the prodigious facility with which the
Mahometans carried on their conquests. Instead of a continual series of
extortions devised by the subtle avarice of the Greek emperors, the
people were subjected to a simple tribute which was paid and collected
with ease. Thus they were far happier in obeying a barbarous nation
than a corrupt government, in which they suffered every inconvenience of
lost liberty, with all the horror of present slavery.
Footnotes
[13]
See in history the greatness, the oddity, and even the folly of
those taxes. Anastasius invented a tax for breathing, "ut quisque pro
haustu ris penderet."
