1So the provinces resounded with the preparation of ships, soldiers and arms, but nothing wore them down so much as the collecting of money: Mucianus, repeatedly saying that money was the sinews of civil war, looked in his judicial inquiries not to right or truth, but solely to the size of a man's wealth. 1Everywhere there were informers, and all the richest men were seized as plunder. 1These exactions, oppressive and intolerable, but excused by the necessity of war, remained even in peace, since Vespasian himself, at the beginning of his reign, was not so very insistent on maintaining injustices, until, through the indulgence of fortune and under wicked teachers, he learned and dared to.
1Mucianus also helped the war with his own resources, generous in private, because he took all the more greedily from the public funds. 1The rest followed his example of contributing money; only a very few had the same licence in recovering it.