The Historians' History of the World 06

The government department which underwent the most important change was that of taxation. And there, again, Augustus with the co-operation of his loyal colleague and friend Agrippa carried out the decisive reform which stood the test of time till at least the middle of the second century in spite of mismanagement and the exactions of despots, and secured the prosperity of the empire during that period. While the indirect taxes, the vectigalia, continued in the main to be levied on the easy but (for the state and still more for its subjects) unprofitable plan of farming them out to companies of publicans, which had come down from republican days—though the publicans were now placed under the strict supervision of the imperial procurators—the tributa, which was assessed according to a fixed scale partly in money and partly in kind, the poll-tax and the land-tax were thenceforth levied directly by government officials, and the extortionate tax-farmers were finally banished from this most important branch of the public service.

A necessary condition of such a reform was an accurate knowledge of the empire and its taxable capacity. The census of the whole world did not take place at one and the same time, as the apostle Luke supposed, but the census of Palestine which he records certainly formed part of the survey of the Roman Empire which was gradually proceeded with in the early days of imperial rule, and by which the extent of the country, the nature of the soil, and the number and social position of its inhabitants, were ascertained as a basis for taxation and recruiting. In an inscription found at Berytus an officer records that by the command of Quirinus, who as governor of Syria took the census of Palestine mentioned by St. Luke, he had ascertained the number of citizens in Apamea in Syria; and numbers of his comrades must in like manner have been employed on this troublesome business in every part of the empire.

According to these statistics the land-tax and the poll-tax, the chief sources of revenue in the empire, were assessed. The latter affected only those who did not possess full rights of citizenship and was always regarded as a mark of subjection in consequence; the burden of the former fell upon all land in the provinces unless by the jus Italicum, which was most sparingly conferred, it was placed on the same footing as the soil of Italy, which was exempted from the tax. But even Italian soil ultimately lost its immunity from taxation; and the introduction of the land tax into Italy, which formed part of Diocletian’s reform in this department, marks the reduction of this country, privileged above all others in the constitution of Augustus, to the level of the provinces.

Unfortunately taxation in the early days of the empire is one of the most obscure of subjects, as our sources of information yield nothing much until the reign of Diocletian. But the great discoveries of papyri and quantities of receipt-shards (the so-called ostraca) recently made in Egypt have already thrown some light upon the widely extended and complicated administration of the country, and we may hope for further instruction from the land of the Ptolemies, which exercised a stronger influence than any other upon the administration of the Roman Empire.