Other new sources of revenue included debasing the coinage, which caused inflation so bad that the government would not accept its own Roman money in payment of Roman taxes.
In the later days of the Roman Empire, the Church found the stage possessed by frightful plays, which debased the morals of a people already fallen too low.
But your cure must begin somewhere, and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never be reformed without this particular reform to begin with.