Early Roman Tax Reform

In the little agency where I work we have this small but devoted group of staff who meet once a week to read Latin. Most of us are decidedly amateur, but we've always been fortunate enough to have at least one genuine classicist who can guide us through the thickets of Latin grammar and syntax, while also supplying any necessary help with vocabulary. In this way we have managed to read quite a good deal of the Latin classical canon, most of Virgil and Ovid, and a substantial amount of Cicero, with a bit of Catullus and Plautus tossed in for fun.

Lately we've been working our way through Livy's enormous History of Rome, or Ab urbe condita, maintaining a pace of about a hundred lines, more or less, per week. Well, as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. We take our time and divert ourselves with a running commentary on Roman antiquity and modern America. It's amazing how apt some of Livy's political observations are, but I've mentioned on more than one occasion that I think we have much in common with the early Roman empire.

What struck me recently, and prompted me to write this little bit of commentary, was Livy's account of Servius Tullius' elaborate reconfiguration of what might be called the Roman draft. Since nearly every able bodied male citizen was expected to serve in some capacity in the Roman military, Servius decided that the burden should be shared more fairly, and that those with greater resources should be expected to contribute more to the national defense. (With Romans it was always defense they were concerned about. Romans never admitted to being the aggressor. They were only interested in peace, Pax Romana.) And so a greater share of the cost of maintaining a sufficient army of Roman citizens was borne by those who possessed centum milium aeris, a hundred thousand in bronze.

But here's the phrase that really caught my attention: Haec omnia in dites a pauperibus inclinata onera. My English of that would be something like, "All these burdens were shifted away from the poor and onto the wealthy." So far as I've been able to determine this was the first instance, at least according to Livy, of a concerted effort to introduce the concept of a graduated tax, with the rich assuming a greater share of the burden for the state. So now we know, it was Servius who came up with that one.