finance, Roman
finance, Roman‘Taxes are the sinews of the state’. So claimed both Cicero and the great jurist Ulpian. Despite this recognition of the central importance of taxation no systematic ancient treatment of Roman public finance survives. Extended financial documents are also rare (though see now the elaborate schedule of the portoria (customs duties) of Asia, L'Année Épigraphique 1989, 681). Therefore many details about (e.g.) the allocation and collection of taxes or about the character of fiscal institutions such as the fiscus, patrimonium, and the res privata remain obscure and disputed. Despite the serious deficiencies in our evidence the broad features of the history and development of Roman public finance through the republic and the Principate to the later empire can be delineated with some confidence.
In the republic there were, traditionally, two major types of revenue namely the regular vectigalia...
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