The following inscription was found at the town of Zaraï, the modern day Aïn Oulmene in Algeria. It dates from 202AD and contains the regulations of an interior tax station in the province of Africa.
As with other interior stations, as opposed to tax stations that regulated the importation of goods, such as ports, the taxes are not raised ‘ad valorem’, that is to say, not as a percentage of the value of the goods and are hence lower that the taxes levied at frontiers.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that these items couldn’t be taxed at both ends. Which, as you may imagine, sometimes caused some unhappiness among the people.
The date is given using the standard Roman procedure of ‘consular dating’ rather than giving the year a number and the two Emperors mentioned, as consuls, are Septimius Severus and his son, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known as ‘Caracalla’.
The inscription has been posted to revise taxation after the removal of an unnamed Cohort, but the reason for their removal isn’t known. The military was exempt from custom duties on items purchased for their personal needs, but their departure rendered the previous tax regime obsolete.
There is no evidence that the military was ever used for the collection of taxes. Instead that duty was the responsibility of collectors that the Romans described as ‘tax farmers.’ If it was ever necessary for them to use strong-arm tactics to enforce tax collection, the tax farmers would have a unit of ‘bodyguards’ who could be employed to persuade people, with the aid of something heavy if necessary, that paying up was in their best interest.
In turn these tax farmers got their legal power from local magistrates who could, when needed, lend the support of their own bodyguards, known as ‘lictors’. As a sign of their authority, each lictor carried a ‘fasces’, a bundle of rods and an Etruscan axe, tightly bound together. The fasces not only served as a symbol of power, but it could also be used to clonk reluctant peasants over the head with should they not be willing to shut the hell up and pay their dues.
The ‘fasces’ is also the origin of the word ‘fascism’.
(bronze ‘modius’, 4th Century AD, with an inscription showing it adheres to Imperial regulations over weights and measures)
(CIL, VOL VIII, No. 4508)
In the consulship of the Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Augustus Pius, for the third time, and of the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus Pius. Customs regulations instituted after the departure of the cohort:
Regulation for tax per head
Slaves, each - 1 ½ denarii
Horse; mare - 1 ½ denarii
Mule; she-mule - 1 ½ denarii
Ass; cow - ½ denarius
Pig - 1 sesterce
Suckling pig - ½ sesterce
Sheep, goat - 1 sesterce
Kid, lamb - ½ sesterce
Cattle for market, duty free
Regulation for imported clothing
Dinner mantle - 1 ½ denarii
Tunic costing 300 sesterces - 1 ½ denarii
Blanket - ½ denarius
Purple cloak - 1 denarius
Other African clothing, per garment - ½ denarius
Regulation on hides
Hide, dressed - ½ denarius
Hide, with hair - ½ sesterce
Sheepskin; goatskin - ½ sesterce
Supple saddle hides, per 100lbs - ……
Coarse hides, per 100lbs - ½ denarius
Glue, per 10lbs - ½ sesterce
Sponges, per 10lbs - ½ sesterce
Miscellaneous customs regulations
Cattle, beasts of burden, duty free; other items as above
Wine, per amphora; garum* per amphora - 1 sesterce
Dates, per 100lbs - ½ denarius
Figs, per 100lbs - ….
Green peas, in the pod, per 10 modi** - ….
Nuts, per 10 modi - ….
Resin, pitch, alum, per 100lbs - ….
Iron…..
The rest of the inscription is lost.
*Garum was a sauce made from fermented fish, similar to the fish sauce used in oriental cookery today
** A modius was a unit of volumetric measurement roughly equivalent to about 8.7 litres or 3.5 gallons.
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Now I'm dying to know the customs regulations for Iron...!