How to escape taxes in ancient Rome: a 1,900 -year -old papyrus reveals an old tax evasion program

It was surely not a coincidence that the New York Times published His story on the trial of a certain Gadalias and Saulos Monday April 14th. Defenders, as their names suggest, did not live in modernity: the papyrus documenting their legal problems dates back to the reign of HadrianAbout 130 AD. These men were charged, written the Times“Franz Lidz, with” the falsification of documents and the sale and the illegal manumeration, or the release of slaves – all to avoid paying tasks in the Roman provinces far from Judea and Arabia, a region roughly corresponding to Israel and the current Jordan. »»

In other words, Gadalias and Saulos have been accused of tax evasion, a subject still in the minds of the Americans in the shadow of their tax due date on April 15. While the prospect of an audit of the IRS is more than a few awakened at night, the old Roman law went, predictable, a little harder.

“The penalties go from heavy fines and permanent exile to forced labor in salt mines and, in the worst case, Damnatio Ad Bidias, a public execution in which the convicts were devoured by wild animals,” writes Lidz. Such a fate would probably not have been out of the question for people recognized by a crime of these proportions.

The document for a long time of this case has been only properly deciphered, and even understood for having been written in ancient Greek, after its rediscovery in 2014. “A team of researchers was assembled to carry out a detailed physical examination and reference names and locations with other historical sources”, which led to This paper Posted last January. For any scholar of Roman law, such an opportunity to enter the minds of the judges of civilization and its criminals could hardly be transmitted. Even on the edge of the Empire, prosecutors prove to have used “skilful rhetorical strategies worthy of Cicero and Quintilian and have shown an excellent mastery of Roman legal terms and concepts in Greek.” This will undoubtedly be that today's law students speculate: in particular, on the existence of an old chatpt.

via Nytimes

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Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.