prompted Augustus to incorporate these new features of taxation in the Roman governmental policy, and suggests a desire to relieve the provinces from their burden of tribute, or to effect the impoverishment of the senate or the "equestrian" (knights) order. A more modern and probably a more correct view is, that Augustus recognized that, as Rome possessed all the known world that she considered worth possessing, the profitable results of further conquests, and the drain of accumulated wealth from subjugated nations, had practically come to an end; that her army henceforth existed mainly for maintaining the integrity of the empire, or for defense; and that for its support, in default of opportunities to plunder, an extensive and rigorous system of taxation had become necessary.
Under the system of taxation established by Augustus and extended by his successors, most of the taxes known to modern times were anticipated by the Romans. Apart from the taxes on land, they had export and import taxes; tolls for passage over bridges; a tax upon salt; a tax in kind upon corn (wheat), barley, wine, oil, meat, and wood; a tax upon the value of manumitted slaves; on sales; and a capitation or poll tax. Of other notable and peculiar Roman taxes was one on the wages of prostitutes; and apart from his wars with the Jews and the building of the Colosseum, the Roman Emperor Vespasian is best known in history as the originator of a tax on urinals.
Excepting possibly the land tax, there does not appear to have been any general and uniform system of taxation for the whole empire. The taxes on imports and exports were not uniform, and there were separate customs districts, each with a tariff of its own, and some with special immunities. Under the reign of Augustus and his successors, duties varying from an eighth to the fortieth part of the value of the commodity were imposed at Rome on every kind of merchandise, "which through a thousand channels flowed to the great center of opulence and luxury; and in whatsoever manner the law was expressed, it was the Roman purchaser and not the provincial merchant that paid the tax."[1]
A general tax (characterized by Gibbon as an excise), and seldom exceeding one per cent was also exacted at Rome on whatever "was sold in the market place, or by public auction, from the most considerable purchase of land and houses to those minute objects which can only derive a value from their infinite multitude and daily consumption." As exports were subject to Roman taxation as well as imports, and as the average rates imposed in both cases were probably low, these forms of taxation appear to have been in the nature of a payment for the privilege
- ↑ Gibbon, vol. i, p. 190, who in turn cites Tacitus, Annals, vol. xiii, p. 31, as authority.
