Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt

Thomas R. Blanton IV, Agnes Choi, Jinyu Liu, Thomas R. Blanton IV, Agnes Choi, Jinyu Liu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367472207
• eBook ISBN: 9781000598438
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This volume introduces new perspectives on taxation policies in the Roman Empire, the Galilee, and Egypt, with unique insights into the economic effects of imperial pacification on local and regional microlevel economies in the Galilee both before and after the First Jewish Revolt against Rome.

Through examining tax documents and other ancient texts in detail, this book offers innovative perspectives on the mechanisms, ideological justifications, and politically hierarchizing functions of taxation and tribute, particularly in the Roman Empire. Moreover, leading archaeologists present important information about the economic effects of the First Jewish Revolt on local economies in the Galilee, based on findings from recent archaeological excavations.

Taxation, Economy, and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee, and Egypt is of interest to students and scholars in Classical, Biblical, and Jewish Studies, as well as economic history and Mediterranean archaeology.

Part ITaxation in Egypt and the Roman Empire

1Taxation and Tribute in Early State Thought and Practice

John T. Fitzgerald

DOI: 10.4324/9781003041696-3

There were originally two chief financial centers in the ancient Levantine and Mediterranean world. These were the temple and the palace, and their coexistence as financial institutions occurred at a time when the separation of “church” and “state” was nonexistent. There were important overlaps between these two institutions, and one of these overlaps involved taxation. As Leo Oppenheim (1947: 118) argued long ago in regard to Mesopotamia, “the secular authorities collected tax payments, dues, etc., in the same way as did the temple organization.”¹ Furthermore, both institutions received mandatory payments as well as offerings that were more or less voluntary. This overlap between temple and palace was especially conspicuous in the ancient Near East, where tithes and taxes were often paid in “silver, commodity staples (barley, dates, sesame), sheep, or other animals” (Stevens, 2006: 99), and where state and temple revenues could also include conscripted labor. Many of the same overlaps between the state and its religious groups also existed in both Greece and Rome, with public and sacred finances often intertwined in various ways (Migeotte, 1998; 2006; Dignas, 2002), and with temples on occasion even extending loans to the state (Pritchard, 2012).

Taxation and Tribute

Given these facts, it is not surprising that there was also a terminological overlap. Today, we routinely use different terms to distinguish between the assets directed to these two institutions. We tend to call the mandatory payments made to the temple a “tithe” and the compulsory payments to the palace a “tax.” Voluntary offerings directed to the temple and palace are both called “gifts.” Ancient nomenclature, however, was often far messier and not clearly differentiated. As Marty Stevens has correctly noted (2006: 7), in ancient texts “taxes were due to the temple, tithes were presented to the palace, gifts were owed to the king, predetermined amounts of tribute were paid annually, the state appropriated gifts to the temple, and the temple made use of gifts destined for the crown.”² Furthermore, socioeconomic considerations were sometimes operative in the terminology employed. “Peasants paid ‘taxes’ and the nobility gave ‘gifts,’” with commodities given as taxes and prestige goods accepted as gifts (Stevens, 2006: 100).³ In this kind of institutional context, “gifts were calculated and obligatory, [and] … were, in fact, forms of taxation or remuneration” (Claessen, 1989: 48).

The practices of levying taxes and exacting tribute were well established in the ancient world long before the time of classical antiquity. Indeed, cultural anthropologist Henri J. M. Claessen (1989: 55) argues not only that taxation and tribute were characteristic of early states, but also that they were historically the two most important sources for early state economics.⁴ For example, both tribute and taxes were already a firm reality in Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium BCE. As Steven Garfinkle (2012: 6920) notes with regard to the third dynasty at Ur in southern Mesopotamia, “Support for the various activities of the kings came largely from tribute, the result of raids and conquest east of the Tigris, and from taxing the wealthy provinces at the center of the state.” The taxation system at Ur was remarkably developed and complex, with particular and specialized resources extracted from the various provinces and with new cities built to serve as administrative processing centers (Garfinkle, 2012: 6920).⁵

Taxes played a key role in early state ideology, which was ostensibly based on the principle of reciprocity.⁶ As Claessen and Skalník (1978: 638) observe, “all categories of subjects provide the sovereign with goods and services (tribute and tax), while the sovereign for his part is responsible for his subjects’ protection, law and order, and the bestowal of benevolence.” Viewed in this way, taxes were seen as part of a redistributive economy and were politically justified on that basis. Yet there are at least two problems involved with this formulation. First, there is a growing debate as to whether “redistribution” is an appropriate and useful term to understand ancient palatial societies and economies (Halstead, 2011). Second, even granted a qualified use of the term “redistribution” as an economic concept, actual palatial economies “were not ‘redistributive’ but distributive” (Manning, 2018: 43). That is, the actual reciprocation involved in early states was often imbalanced and unequal, resulting in redistributive exploitation and enhanced social inequality (Claessen and Skalník, 1978: 614, 638–9, 644) rather than distributive justice. In such cases, the rhetoric of reciprocity functioned to justify the exploitation and served to mask the reality that reciprocation as practiced was more fictive than real.⁷

In the remaining portion of this essay, I shall focus on tribute, distinguishing it conceptually from taxes. In distinguishing between taxes and tribute, I treat taxes as contributions made by those who understand themselves to be part of the state to which their contributions are made, and tribute as contributions made to other (foreign) states.⁸ If the tribute is to be given on a regular basis, “tribute relations” between the receiving state and the contributing state are created. Tribute relations are thus “a form of economic exploitation which consists of the regular appropriation of products from the conquered population which for the most part retains its former economic and social structure” (Pershits, 1979: 150).

Claessen (1989: 51) also distinguishes between taxes and tribute, but he uses redistribution as the key difference: “Taxation is found when the contributing group falls within the redistribution system, and tribute when the contributing group falls outside the redistribution.” For him, “Taxation is based in [the] last analysis on some form of redistribution—tribute never” (Claessen, 1989: 51). While this is an important distinction, it remains unclear whether it is valid for large early empires, which, like Ur III, treated core provinces differently from the way it did its more distant territories.⁹ Even in a league of ancient, allied states, not all allies were equal. Some states in the league were strong and remained independent, with the terms of their alliance and the amount of their financial contribution a matter of negotiation with the league’s leader. Other allied states had been previously defeated in war and were clearly subservient; their obligations to the league leader were typically defined by treaty.¹⁰ In the case of certain empires (such as Rome), some cities and states began giving tribute after being conquered or after accepting foreign rule without active resistance; at a later time, they were formally incorporated into the empire. Some benefits (such as political stability promised by the vaunted Pax Romana) were claimed as flowing to the conquered states, especially those that were administratively incorporated within a burgeoning empire. To the extent that such benefits were part of the terms agreed upon by the conqueror and the conquered for the tribute, groups paying the tribute had every right to expect the promised redistribution. The reciprocity involved was, to be sure, starkly asymmetrical, but the notion was still present.¹¹ This stands in stark contrast to booty and plunder, where confiscation of goods belongs ideologically to the spoils of war.¹²

The Significance of Tribute

The importance of tribute was linked to the significance of warfare for early states and empires, especially in the first millennium BCE. As Joseph Manning (2018: 189) has noted, states’ war-making capacity had significant implications for “their size and endurance as well as their extractive power, and war was a critical driver in economic change and in imperial performance.” War was a key aspect of fiscal policy for Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Athens, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and Rome, as well as other states and empires. As Manning (2018: 189) puts it,

War was a “mode of acquisition”; it was a “structural” part of premodern economies more broadly, a method of revenue extraction, a style of governance (rulers as war leaders); and the acquisitive aspect of war was something that Rome … benefitted enormously from.

Early states and empires uniformly required their subjugated enemies to pay tribute and often expected even their allies to do the same as the price they paid for the greater power’s leadership and their own security.¹³ In the world of Realpolitik, payment of tribute was the universal norm, with the amount due usually based on the stronger power’s assessment of the subdued state’s ability to pay or determined by negotiations between the parties involved. Exemption from tribute or taxes was typically a reward for loyalty and meritorious actions, a measure to facilitate the integration of a city and its citizens into the new state or empire, a means of providing relief in difficult times, or an incentive for good behavior. Such exemptions were usually temporary o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Introduction
• PART I Taxation in Egypt and the Roman Empire
• PART II The Galilean Economy before and after the First Judean Revolt
• Epilogue
• Index of Primary Sources
• Index of Subjects