Two 'Topoi' in the 'Agricola

Bibliographic Data

ID11809771
AuthorsJ C Mann, James Mann (0000-0002-8940-3118, More Associates, corresponding author)
Year1985
Volume16
Pages21-21
Publication date1985-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritannia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0068-113X • E-ISSN: 1753-5352
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/526390
OpenAlexW2117022314
LanguageEN
Citations received32

Agricola 19. The normal rule for taxation in the Principate is that it was paid in money. This is true both of direct taxation (tributum soli, a tax on the capital value of land, and tributum capitis, a poll-tax which also seems to have been a tax on the capital value of personal property) and of indirect taxation (including inheritance duties, sales taxes and customs). Also, instead of gold crowns, such as had been granted to late Republican commanders in gratitude for their victories, emperors preferred to receive their gold straight (aurum coronarium). Direct taxation and crown gold were normally collected by the city authorities, indirect taxes at first by publicani (tax-farmers), later by procurators. Only in the most exceptional circumstances was taxation ever paid in kind during the Principate. In the case of the Frisii (in what is now Holland) in the Julio-Claudian period, Tacitus specifically says (Ann. IV. 28) that it was on account of their extreme poverty that Drusus (c. 9 B.C.) imposed a form of taxation in ox-hides instead of money, the ox-hides being specifically reserved for military use. The Batavi, equally poverty-stricken, were even allowed to provide recruits instead of taxation in money (Tac. Hist. IV. 17; V. 25 and Germania 29). Thus in Britain, in the organized cities, the inhabitants paid direct taxes through their city authorities. In the military zone the military authorities possibly collected direct taxes on behalf of the provincial procurator. It is difficult to believe that the inhabitants of the vici at auxiliary forts were allowed to escape tributum soli on the land which they held and farmed. They must similarly have paid indirect taxation'. Equally, it is quite impossible to believe that they were allowed to get away without paying rent for their land: land in the frontier zone must have ranked as public land (ager publicus populi Romani). The rural inhabitants of the frontier zone, on the other hand, were so impoverished (as George Jobey's excavations in particular have shown) that quite possibly they, like the Frisii, paid taxation in ox-hides. The Roman army must have had an enormous appetite for leather for tents as well as for arms, armour, saddlery and footwear so much so that they will have taken all the leather that they could get. There was no corn-tax in the Principate. This is a modern myth. Corn was requisitioned; that is, it was obtained by means of compulsory purchase. We have little evidence on this in the western provinces, except for what Tacitus tells us in Agricola I9, but the system was probably little different from that described by Cicero as existing in Sicily in the first century B.C.2 The relevant part of Cicero's evidence is that which he gives on the right of the provincial

Archaeology · Art · Literature · Topos theory · Classical Antiquity Studies · History

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