situated, the names of two neighbours, and the character of the land assessed.[1]
The taxes were either imposts on the land (tributum soli) or on the person (tributum capitis). The land-tax was in most provinces paid either in money or grain, more usually in the former; but in certain minor districts it was delivered wholly, or almost wholly, in kind. Cyrene sent its famous silphium, the Sanni in Pontus wax, and the Frisii of Germany the skins of oxen.[2] The personal tax might be one on professions, income, or movable property. It was rarely a poll-tax pure and simple, although this is found in Egypt[3] as a relic of the Ptolemaic organisation; amongst the Jews, when the [Greek: didrachmon] had been diverted from the Jewish temple to that of Jupiter Capitolinus;[4] in Britain,[5] where it would have been difficult to collect any other personal tax from the mass of the people; and in the tiny island of Tenos,[6] whose poverty probably forbade any other method of assessment. It may, however, have existed in many provinces by the side of other personal taxes as a burden imposed on those whose property fell below a certain rating.
The collection of the chief imperial taxes was now direct, since the system of decumae with the accompanying tax-farmers (decumani) had been abolished.[7] But there seem to have been different degrees of directness in the method. A distinction is drawn between the stipendium of the public and the tributum of Caesar's provinces,[8] and as this distinction can scarcely be one of a method of taxation, it must be one based on the method of collection. Perhaps in the public provinces the taxes were still collected by the states themselves and paid by them to the(Dio Cass. lxii. 3).]
- ↑ Dig. 50, 15, 4 "Forma censuali cavetur, ut agri sic in censum referantur. Nomen fundi cujusque: et in qua civitate et in quo pago sit: et quos duos vicinos proximos habeat. Et arvum . . . vinea . . . olivae . . . pratum . . . pascua . . . silvae caeduae."
- ↑ Plin. H.N. xix. 40; xxi. 77; Tac. Ann. iv. 72.
- ↑ Josephus Bell. Jud. ii. 16, 4; cf. Grenfell and Hunt l.c.
- ↑ Josephus Bell. Jud. vii. 6, 6. The Jews seem, however, to have paid other personal taxes as well. See App. Syr. 50; Marquardt Staatsverw. ii. p. 202.
- ↑ Boadicea is made to say that, besides the land-tax, [Greek: tôn sômatôn autôn dasmon etêsion pheromen
- ↑ C. I. Gr. 2336.
- ↑ p. 321.
- ↑ Gaius ii. 21 "(provincialia praedia) quorum alia stipendiaria, alia tributaria vocamus. Stipendiaria sunt ea, quae in iis provinciis sunt quae propriae populi Romani esse intelliguntur. Tributaria sunt ea, quae in his provinciis sunt quae propriae Caesaris esse creduntur."
