CHAP. XVI.: Of the Conquests of the Mahometans.

IT was this excess of taxes See in history the greatness, the oddity and even the folly, of those taxes. Anastasius invented a tax for breathing, ut quisque pro haustu æris penderet. ^†484 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.