such system is alike contrary to fact and to the
whole nature of the Lombard people, any critical and impartial study
of the sources of government revenues at this time will make clear. It
would be out of place to burden a paper of this character with the
results of a minute investigation into the fiscal relations of the
rulers and the people when this has no immediate connection with the
development of municipal government; but I will state that a careful
examination of all available sources, including documents and
statutory enactments, both public and private, reveals, to my mind, a
theory and a system of raising the revenues of the state closely
allied in both principle and detail to feudal forms and feudal ideas,
and having little in common save the names of a few of its officers,
with the ancient methods of collecting the taxes peculiar to the Roman
municipal constitution.[41]

In general terms, the collectors of the revenues were called
_telonarii_, or _actores, exactores_ or _actionarii_, etc., and the
taxes they collected were the usual feudal dues, fines, forfeitures,
compositions for service, etc. The nomenclature of these various
officers and of the different duties they had to levy, varying as it
did with regard to locality, and more especially with regard to
time--the Franks introducing an entirely new set of names for
institutions often identical in character to those displaced--presents
an amount of confusion which, fortunately, it is not necessary for us
to endeavor to penetrate; but, having stated the foregoing general
conviction with regard to the fiscal system, we will now pass on to a
consideration of some of the lesser offices held within each _civitas_
by the deputies and subordinates of the _dux_. These, of course, were
connected, in degrees more or less close, with the different _curtes
regiae_, and with the _placita_ held in the various _civitates_
commonly about three times in the year. Some of the officers, like the
_vice-comes_ found to have existed in many localities, are simply
deputies of the _dux_, or representatives of his person, and hold
their office simply by virtue of his will and under a somewhat
arbitrary tenure; others, like the gastald, the _sculdahis_, and later
the _scabinus_, represent offices which formed an integral part of the
constitution of the government, and appointment to which, whether made
by the _dux_ or by the central power, involved a necessary duty of a
determ