Publicans in the Principate

Introduction

In the Roman Republic, revenue collection was primarily handled by private contractors due to a limited civil service.
Property tax (tributum) collection was initially a compulsory public service discharged by wealthy citizens (tributi aerarii).
Rome demanded lump sums from local communities in certain provinces, allowing them to manage their own tax collection.
For direct and indirect taxes, and rents on public domains, Rome relied on private contractors (publicani) who worked for profit.

Definition of Publicani

Ulpian defined publicans as those who:
- Utilize public resources.
- Pay a vectigal (tax) to the state.
- Collect ¢ributum (direct taxes).
- Lease anything from the fiscus (treasury).
This definition included tax collectors and renters of public or imperial lands, but excluded contractors for buildings and army supplies.

Republic vs. Principate

Revenue farming was common in Greek cities and later adopted by Roman municipalities.
Republican contracts were vast, leading to powerful publican companies with significant political influence.
Republican magistrates often struggled to control publicans, leading to conflicts with the law and taxpayer interests.
The Principate brought changes, with local governments collecting the tributum within their territories, possibly established by Caesar.
Publican companies persisted, however, their political influence waned.
Emperors created a civil service of freedmen and slaves, overseen by equestrian procurators, to better control publicans.
Special bureaux were established to supervise specific revenues, initially focusing on oversight rather than direct collection.
Tax-farming evolved, shifting from lump sums to a percentage of collections for publicans.
Some scholars suggest a transition from companies to individual contractors (Einzelpdchter), although companies persisted into the Severan period.

Later Developments

Procurators gradually assumed tax collection duties for many taxes. Tax-farming remained a key aspect even as Severan jurists handled such issues.
Despite bureaucratic growth, local governments retained the responsibility for direct taxes, indicating that state collection was never fully adopted as the normal procedure.
When officials replaced tax-farmers, specific reasons likely drove the changes, but the reasons are difficult to determine due to lack of evidence.

Limited documentation on the imperial fiscal system makes reliance on arguments from silence imprudent.
Standard accounts of tax collection often suffer from excessive certitude.
Maria Rosa Gimma’s work challenges the pace and extent of changes, but her exposition needs modification and reinforcement.

Republican System Summary

State rents and taxes were typically farmed at Rome (cf. n. 4) by the censors under a lex censoria, which was so described even if other magistrates (e.g. consuls) acted in their place.
Each lex, which was the contract between the state and the publicans, varied in details for different types of operation.
Clauses could be added or amended by the magistrate at Rome responsible for any particular lease.
Governors of provinces also had some authority to modify the contracts, as Verres did in Sicily.
In the Principate, censors no longer functioned, leaving it unclear which officials leased contracts with some probably leased locally by procurators and others by prefects.
A Juristic fragment still treat a lex censoria as valid, suggesting that a standard Republican contract continued in use.
Statute laws, like that passed by Gaius Gracchus, also determined the terms of contracts.
Tacitus refers to tax companies established by consuls and tribunes, implying legislation regulated the organization of societates.

Legislative Power in the Principate

Both the senate and emperor acquired legislative power.
Corporate status was granted via leges, decrees of the senate, and imperial constitutions.
The senate and later the emperor could vary publicans' contractual obligations.

Rights and Duties

Collectors' rights and duties concerning taxpayers were regulated by the praetor’s edict at Rome and governors' edicts in the provinces.
Hadrian standardized the praetor’s edict, which prescribed actions against publicans for wrongdoing.
Imperial constitutions supplemented the edicts.
Taxpayers' rights to sue collectors extended to lessees of state properties and municipal publicans.
Custom was generally observed with taxes based on imperial constitutions.
*Immemorial practice may have dictated the levy of scriptura in Italy.

Publican's Rights

Cicero stated that publicans could sue and take pledges but not seize property in Italy and most provinces.
Gaius noted they had an action for the value of unreturned pledges as a fine for payment default.
Publicans could seize animals on public pastures for tax-law breaches.
With exceptions, they could impound undeclared goods for customs duty, a right Nero tried to limit.
Suits in courts were needed for direct tax or rent defaults on public land.
Taxpayers could sue for wrongful exactions. The praetor’s edict prescribed double damages for violent, uncompensated seizures.
Provincial governors followed similar rules, with Verres promising eightfold damages in theory.
*Gabinius allegedly refused publican suits, and Cicero and Bibulus addressed publican litigation in their edicts.

Societates Vectigalium

Tax-farming in the Republic was generally managed by companies (societates) that persisted through the reigns of Tiberius and Nero.
It is important to determine their changes in character, if any, or replacement by individual publicans or salaried officials.
Magistrates did not award contracts merely on the highest monetary bid but also based on the likelihood of efficient work.

Manceps

The contractor who secured the right to collect taxes or rents was termed the manceps, who was obligated by the contracts. This arrangement was being called a lease.

Characteristics of a Manceps

The manceps was not a owner, but rather a lessee, and also, in the event that the money was not rendered, had to provide sureties.
Maneeps is still found, more preferred by jurists.

Responsibilities of a Manceps

A man who rents public lands is a conductor, but so is the lessee of the right to collect public revenues.
Hadrian assimilated them.
An inscription of this period refers to the mancipes of the Gallic portoria; they can only be the publicans who are more generally styled conductores.
Minting operations are said to have been farmed sometimes to a manceps, sometimes to conductores, and both terms can be used of the lessees of the sulphur mines at Agrigentum.

Associations of a Manceps

A manceps might be an Einzelpdchter, an individual contractor acting without any partners.
But he might be his own surety.
Some contracts were petty affairs, and the mancipes little men.
But even in such cases of Kleinpacht, there might be partners (soci).

Republican Era and the Society Between Manceps

At Rome public contractors had been organized in companies at least as early as the Hannibalic war.
Polybius: Large numbers of Romans were involved, not only as purchasers (mancipes) and sureties (praedes) but as partners (soci).
Others had investments in these joint enterprises, apparently rather like the shares of modern stockholders.
The lex Irnitana also distinguishes soci from holders of partes in municipal undertakings.
Polybius specifies contractors for public buildings and for revenues from public domains including mines and portorta: only after the Gracchi were contracts for collecting provincial tribute leased at Rome.
Strict form the contract was purchased or rented by the manceps, whom Festus calls ‘auctorem emptionis’, but the sociz, like those in a merely private business, must have contributed working capital, or services as managers, or both.
They would normally have included the praedes, who placed their entire substance at risk, and those who pledged particular praedia as security, and all would have shared the profits and losses in proportions agreed among themselves.
For large undertakings substantial capital and, in particular, a numerous personnel, chiefly slaves and freedmen, who would need supervision at a higher level, had to be employed.
Moreover it was in the interest of the state to ascertain that an adequate organization would be available before the contract was leased to any would-be manceps. It was not enough to require him to put up sufficient praedes and praedia.
The state presumably made payments to the contractor initially and in stages thereafter; if the work was not satisfactorily performed, it could then seek to recover its disbursements by selling up the praedes and sequestering praedia.
Whether or not the maniceps was legally the mere representative of a societas already formed, the reality was that which Cicero and Livy represent it to have been.

Relationship Between State, Manceps and Society

The state entered into a direct legal relationship only with the manceps and praedes and with such other persons as obligated praedia to the treasury, and that the sociz were involved only indirectly as a result of the rights and obligations determined by private contracts with the manceps and inter se.

Continued Relationship, and Identity

It is was necessary for the socit themselves to be actually engaged in tax collection they must have been registered. | . It is clear that in large contracts the magistrates took cognizance of the identity of the soci.

Legal Aspect Between Society and Manceps

The state granted exemption from military service to the nineteen members of three companies which were to furnish army supplies. This privilege was stipulated by them as a precondition of their taking on the task.

Inability of Republic Officials

Verres as urban praetor acted in a similar way indicating his conduct was evidently not illegal.

Best Qualified Individual

The magistrate letting out a contract had to have regard to the presumed efficiency of the competitors, to the capital and personnel available to them, and in some cases to the standard of past performance; the state did not necessarily benefit from accepting what seemed prima facie the most attractive financial terms.

Societas

Because the collection of revenue was in fact farmed in most cases to a societas that the plural publicant is normally used rather than the singular to denote the collectors; probably indeed there is little significance in the use of the singular, which could be deemed to include the plural.

Responsibilities Between the Society Members

Under the law governing private partnerships, partners shared in agreed proportions in the profits or losses of all the activities of any of them pursuant to the common enterprise, and their reciprocal obligations were enforceable by actions in the courts, the bringing of which, however, automatically dissolved the partnership.
They might divide up the administration among themselves, and in this case they must surely all have been registered in public records.
The interdict that secured the lessee of public land in its enjoyment was also available to a partner. At Vipasca the right to seize pledges belonged not only to the lessees of various petty monopolies but to their soca and actores (n. 11).

Decisions Within in the Society

Their decisions were not taken by the manceps or by the soci as such, but by their magistri, probably appointed annually, and in one instance by a mysterious body of decumani, some sort of board of directors.* Like collegia, which also had magistri, these companies could in Cicero’s time pass ‘decrees’.

Juristic Views

Accepted that the text of all such fragments has often been interpolated, i.e. altered, by the compilers, if not already in revised editions of the treatises which they excerpted, principally in order to adapt it to subsequent developments in the law.
No doubt some scholars were too prone to detect ‘interpolations’ everywhere, but no one can doubt that they may be found.
It seems clear that all or nearly all the fragments relating to publican companies have suffered such alterations, though in this case they were not made to bring the texts up to date.
Tax-farming persisted, but in the form of Klewnpacht. Hence, though old rules governing the reciprocal rights and obligations of tax-farmers and taxpayers could still be relevant, and duly appear in the Digest.

Corporate Status

In general a societas or collegium was not entitled ‘corpus habere’, but that the right had been granted in a few cases, e.g. to the ‘vectigalium publicorum sociis’, to those engaged in the extraction of gold, silver, and salt and to certain collegia.
The matter was regulated by /eges, decrees of the senate, and imperial constitutions.
A societas with this status can hold property in common with a common chest and take action like a municipality through an actor or syndicus. He does not say that it was assimilated in all points to a municipality.
Corporate companies would presumably not have had the rights which municipalities enjoyed to manumit and receive legacies, granted first by Marcus to authorized collegia (Dig. xxxiv.

Differences between a company and a private partnership:

They might act through procurators, or through slaves operating as instztores or trading with their pecultum, but a partnership was not a corporate entity with its own representatives, who could sue and be sued on its behalf. A socletas vectigalis indeed differed from other soctetates even when it had not been granted that status.
As we have seen, any socti who farmed taxes were liable for each other’s delicts. Other differences from ordinary partner- ships arise from the rules that the latter are dissolved by the death or withdrawal of any one of the partners or by litigation between them; on such dissolution all the partners, and the heirs of one deceased, were entitled to their due shares in any net profits accruing from previous transactions and liable for any debts already incurred, and the common assets co|n
might also affect the continuance of operations, and would be retained in the business.

Possible Changes in Tax-Farming

Republic revenues were farmed at Rome, in the Principate it began in the providences.
Magistrates are found to impose as penalty and if so disqualification for leasing public revenues.
The surplus that was lawfully collected (to say nothing of illicit exactions) was to cover costs and provide profits, while the deficit, if any, would be their loss.
Quinquennial leases are still envisaged in rescripts of Hadrian and Alexander Severus.
However, in Egypt the Ptolemies had farmed taxes on an annual basis, and there the Roman government may have done the same

Advantages in Farming Collection For Fixed Sums

It supplied the deficiency of public officials.
Hence there was a second advantage in farming collection for lump sums, it guaranteed the income the state could expect to receive.
There was a third potential advantage, taken for example in England by the government of Charles II, that the farmers could be forced to lend money in advance on the security of the revenues farmed.
Farmers could be forced to lend money in advance on the security from the farmed.
Peasants were having a hard time providing cash, therefore the farmers helped during these dry times

Guarantee to the Treasury

This made it the easier to dispense with them altogether. In fact it can be inferred from documents preserved by Josephus that he made the same change for the client but tributary state of Judaea.

Difficulties That May Arise From This Mode.

There was a second advantage in farming collection for lump sums, it guaranteed the income the state could expect to receive.
Against this could be set the risk that the farmers might be entitled to take under the contract a quite excessive proportion of what was due from the taxpayers, to say nothing of the temptation to extortion for their own profit.
In general, whatever may have been the position in Sicily, it seems probable that after Caesar Roman publicans were not used in general to collect tributum, where the task could be committed to local authorities, who might conceivably have employed their own
They were certainly farmed (section VIII). But initially there can have been no data to show the probable yield of either tax.
Was the same system introduced for taxes which had once been leased for lump sums? This must surely be supposed if we regard as Einzelpdchter the conductores of portoria in the extensive Illyrian

Paucity of Evidence

There is not a survival of Ancient treatment to further show records and evidence.
It is fortuitous if occasional allusions are found in other literary works preserved for their stylistic merits. Inscriptions are sparse and seldom perspicuous. What is known for one part of the empire need not apply to others.
Only the fragments of classical jurists show that they were still important as late as the Severan epoch.

Implications

It is particularly imprudent to infer that publicans were not used, if they are not attested.
They then had considerable political influence, and Cicero, our chief source, was Closely connected with them. In the Principate their influence had vanished, at least from sight, and no author whose works survive had any special interest in their operations.

Collection of Tritutum

Limited information shows that, tribute collection was given to territorial authorities. Cicero also stated the same.
Appian’s words might suggested it now had to furnish a fixed quantum of grain rather than the tithes.
Roman Publicans were not used to collect tributum due the fact that the task became committed and could be performed by locals. Rome could not always trust them however in wild locations.

Collection of Publics State

Domains could be exploited in a number of ways including by officials who direct labor and by lessees. This might include mines, quarries e.t.c also.
Imperial evidence is scattered. There might be petty impost at the region level as exemplified by Egypt as it was not a Roman Objective to seek uniformity from region to region.
Lessees of some public properties were described

Farming of the Vicesimae libertatis

There may not be records pertaining to each region during such tax processes

Farming of Portoria

This part of the document, is about taxes, whether or not they would still be farmed and collected if under official super vision . There were a number of considerations for an instance like this. But there were some reasons why the government kept tax-farming and not for one with direct collection.

Epilogue

The document highlights the difficulties the government had securing payments of predictable reports of revenues. The notes are from Brunt’s Roman Imperial Themes, Chapter 17 about the details between legal issues and payments.