THE
ECONOMIC CRISIS IN EGYPT UNDER NERO*
By
H.I. BELL
In
a recent review of Professor A. C. Johnson's Roman
Egypt to the Reign of Diocletian,* Dr. J. G. Milne, after
issuing
a very apposite warning against too implicit reliance on
the evidence of papyri and inscriptions, remarks :
'The
well-known rescript of Tiberius Julius Alexander is
often quoted as proof of the misgovernment of Egypt under
Nero and the reform under Galba : but the date of its
issue,
when news of the death of Nero could only have reached
Alexandria by exceptionally speedy transmission…and
certainly no
communication could have been received from Galba, makes
it probable that the rescript was really a manifesto
of the anti-Neronian party at Alexandria, headed by the
prefect,
which was designed to paint the administration of Nero
as
black as possible and to hold out bright hopes for the
future; and its value as economic evidence is about that
of a modern
election address.'
This
verdict is so contrary to the impression I had formed
when preparing my chapter for
volume x of the Cambridge
Ancient History that I felt bound to re-examine the
evidence; and
this Congress offered a convenient opportunity for
presenting my conclusions. I must confess that, apart
from one unpublished
papyrus, I have no new evidence to submit; but a re-statement
of existing knowledge may be useful.
I
may remark by way of preface, and as a warning of possible
bias, that
Dr. Milne's final characterisation
of the
edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander seemed to me a
priori improbable.
Whatever be thought of Professor Reinmuth's view* that
this document was really the prefect's provincial
edict
(and
personally, though I recognise the force of some
of Reinmuth's arguments,
I am not entirely convinced, we may agree that it
was issued not wholly without reference to the political
situation,
as Wilcken also has suggested*;
and, if so, we may be
sure that the prefect was not disposed to understate
the evils
for which he was promising a remedy; that is a technique
well known to modern governments also. So much may
be readily conceded; but it is going a great deal
further than I
at least, without very good evidence, am prepared
to go, to
suppose that a responsible official, one too of admitted
capacity and experience, would deliberately reply
to complaints never made and remedy evils which did not
exist. But this,
in effect, is what we are asked to believe if we
discount
the evidence of his edict as to economic conditions.
For the statements he makes are definite and explicit.
In
the first place, it is clear, if any reliance at
all can be placed on Alexander's words, that the
edict
was
not issued,
so to say, gratuitously but in response to actual
representations. This is stated generally in the
preamble*:
'whereas, almost from the moment of my entry in
the city,
I am entreated
by petitioners both from the wealthiest classes
here and from
the country farmers not only in small delegations
but also in large groups complaining about
recent abuses,'
and again
'I have strictly prescribed that which lay in
my power to determine and do in regard to each of
your petitions while
the weightier matters requiring the authority and
dignity of the Emperor I shall report to him with
all accuracy.'* it
is quite clear from this that the prefect was
dealing with a considerable mass of complaints
and requests;
and it is not surprising therefore to find him,
in the body
of the edict, taking up particular points and giving
his decision
on them. For example: 'First of all I have decided
that your petition is most reasonable in protesting
that you
should not be compelled against your will to take
over the farming
of taxes contrary to the general practice of the
prefects' (§ 1);* 'it
has often been reported to me that some have already
tried to
cancel mortgages legally
made' (§ 3)*; concerning privileges of immunity…I
have had petitions' (§ 4);* 'this privilege
that Alexandrians should be exempt from
λειτουργιαι χωριχαι], which you
have often demanded' (§ 6);* 'for often
the cultivators throughout the whole land have
appealed
to me'(§ 10);* and so on.
Moreover,
though it is clear that the edict was addressed primarily
to the Alexandrians'
it is
equally certain
that many of its provisions were of universal
application; for
example, section 7 relating to the appointments
of strategi, section 9 on the Idiologus, sections
10
to 12.
Now,
the mere rectification of an abuse is no proof of either
misgovernment or the existence
of an
economic crisis. Anomalies
and inequities may creep into the most enlightened
administrative
system; official corruption may defeat excellent
intentions in the government and co-exist with
a fairly general
level of prosperity— and corruption has
ever been the bane of oriental states, as it
was of most ancient politics. Some
of the abuses which Alexander remedies are
of this kind. Such are the misuse of official
powers
in the case of private
debts mentioned in section 2, possibly the
practices condemned in section 3, the re-opening
of a res
judicata, forbidden
in section 8, and the misdoings of the accountants,
dealt with in section 11. Irregularities of
these kinds, if very
prevalent, as they appear to have been, are
not a healthy sign, but they cannot in themselves
be treated as evidence
of special economic stringency. There are,
however,
some abuses which speak an unambiguous language.
In section I
the prefect prohibits compulsion to undertake
tax-farming and leases; from section 4 we
learn that privileges of immunity
and abatements of taxation were being infringed;
from section 5 that purchasers of land from
the Fiscus were compelled
to pay rent for it; in section 6 Alexandrians
are exempted from country liturgies, to which,
it must be inferred, they
were being irregularly forced; in section 9
the prefect makes drastic provisions to remedy
abuses
in the department of
the Idiologus' declaring, with obvious exaggeration,
that 'the city is almost uninhabitable because
of the multitude
of informers and every household is disrupted';* in section 10 we hear of cultivators, throughout
the whole of Egypt,
burdened with new and irregular assessments;
and in section 12 the practice of 'average
assessment' is condemned, the
implication clearly being that if taxes were
assessed, as they should have been, on actual
yields the tax-payers would
be less heavily burdened.
All
these phenomena are evidence of a definite tightening
up of
the technique of financial
administration, a steady increase of the
pressure on the tax-payers;
and (since
they were aimed, at least ostensibly, not
at supplementing the
perquisites of the officials but at increasing
the
total yield of taxes and public rents) they
are clear evidence
that for some reason it had grown more difficult
to
satisfy the requirements of the Roman government.
Under the system
of administration adopted by it in Egypt
a tax-collector or tax-farmer or local official
was responsible
with person and property for the due collection
of all
revenues which
fell within his sphere of competence. If,
therefore, the proceeds of collection fell short of the
quota, he was
always tempted to increase them by illegal
practices; and conversely
the widespread existence of such practices
is proof of at least some degree of economic
depression.
Let
us now turn to other evidence, in particular to any which
has a bearing on the abuses
mentioned above.
First,
I must
cite one document which might be taken
as testimony in the opposite direction. It is
the well-known
inscription (Dittenberger,
Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectæ 666)
set up by the people of Busiris in honour
of Balbillus, who was prefect
early in the reign of Nero. The preamble
to this speaks of a succession of years
in which the Nile rose satisfactorily,
crowned now by a particularly favourable
inundation, and of Egypt as 'full of all
prosperity.' This evidence must,
however, be used with caution. Balbillus,
on a visit to Busiris, had made himself
very agreeable to the inhabitants, had
suitably
admired the pyramids, and had apparently
ordered the removal
of an accumulation of sand. Moreover, this
was in the early years of Nero's reign
and after a series
of high
Niles, which
always
meant some increase of prosperity for Egypt.
This one inscription
has therefore little weight against the
evidence which makes in the opposite direction.
We
can indeed hardly
reckon as
proof of economic crisis the practices
censured in the edict of Capito* practices
which
were the subject
also
of one
of the edicts of Germanicus, for such abuses
were of a kind to which bureaucratic administration
is liable
at
any time
but the edict of Lusius Geta* is another
matter. This prefect, in April A.D. 54,
accedes to
a petition
of
the priests of
Socnopaeus in the Arsinoite nome, who complained
that they were being forced to undertake
leases of land.
It will
be remembered that this was one of the
abuses forbidden by Alexander.
For such compulsion there can be but one
reason. If tax-farming or the leasing of
land can be
made to yield
a reasonable
profit, there will always be a sufficiency
of voluntary offers. If such voluntary
offers are
not forthcoming,
the conclusion
must be either that the economic condition
of the country is bad or that the government's
terms
are
inequitable;
and since no government with any practical
sense (and nobody will deny this quality
to the Romans)
is likely
without
grave
reason to offer terms so hard as to frighten
applicants, the latter supposition really
implies the former.
Again,
I have pointed out that the principle of responsibility
for collection of the
quota* tempted
the officials
to strain the law whenever collection
became
difficult; and
the responsibility
was collective, passing in case of default
from one official to his colleague or
superior. In two passages of Philo's De Specialibus
Legibus,
first quoted
in this
connexion, so far
as I am aware, by
Professor Rostovtzeff,* the
terrible effects of this principle are
shown.
In one,* Philo
speaks of tax-collectors
who
spared not even the dead but outraged
the corpse of a defaulting tax-payer
in order
to force
his relatives to pay ransom.
The second is more explicit and must
be quoted: 'Recently
a man appointed tax-collector among us,
when some of those who were supposed
to owe taxes
had fled
owing
to
poverty,
through fear of intolerable punishments,
violently carried off
their wives, children, parents and other relatives, beating
and
insulting them and
applying all sorts
of tortures, in
order that they should either reveal
the fugitive or discharge his liabilities,
though they could
do neither,
the one
because they did not know his whereabouts,
the other because they
were just as poor as he; and he did
not release them until, torturing
them with
racks and
wheels, he had
killed them
with the most novel devices of death.'
Philo describes some of these and
then proceeds :
'Those who did
not anticipate the end by suicide…were
led away by turns, first
those
nearest in kin, then those of the
second and third degrees, until the last and
when nobody
belonging
to the family
was left the trouble fell on the
neighbours also, sometimes indeed
on whole villages and cities, which
soon became deserted and empty of
their inhabitants, who migrated
and dispersed
to
places where they
thought they could lie hid.'*
There
may be some exaggeration here (though
we shall see presently that
such depopulation
did
actually
occur), but
it is clear that Philo is writing
from actual experience.
Practices
such as these were irregular enough, even when only the
just
amount of taxes was
claimed; but
the frequent
difficulty of obtaining payment
led the collectors to exact,
from those
who could pay,
more than the legal quota.
In Part ii of the Oxyrhynchus
Papyri there
are, for example, several petitions
in which complaint is
made of extortion by tax-collectors.
They
all belong
to the
same period, about
the year 50.
In two, nos. 284 and 285, the
same collector, a certain Apollophanes,
is accused; in another, 393,
the
collector is named Damis; and
in a third, 394,
the name does
not appear
to be preserved.
The similarity of formulae
in these documents and their
nearness to each other in date
suggest that conditions were
at this
time particularly bad at Oxyrhynchus,
and possibly even that the
petitions
were connected
with
some official enquiry into
tax irregularities then proceeding.
Several years earlier, in A.D.
37, we find a
village scribe
taking an oath,
in P. Oxy. 240, that he was
not privy to any extortion
on
the part
of a certain soldier or his
agents. Extortion by a soldier
might be practised in the requisition
of military supplies or the
enforcement
of
services, but
it seems more likely
that the soldier here concerned
was collecting taxes. The use
of soldiers in tax-collection
was usual enough in Byzantine
times, and there is
evidence that it occurred
also under
Roman rule.
Professor Martin has called
attention to this fact in a
paper read
to the third
Papyrological Congress
at Munich;* and
to the references given by
him may be added
the yet more significant evidence
of one of
the Princeton
papyri, which
seems to be the account of
a taxation official written
about A.D. 35.* Here, among
expenses, occurs the entry
'to
soldiers'
24 drachmae.' Again, in P.
Graux I (=SB. 7461), in A.D.
45 Dionysodorus
writes
to the Strategus
of the
Heracleopolite
nome, that the collector of
poll-tax for Philadelphia reports
the presence in his correspondent's
nome of men from Philadelphia
who are
in default
with
their
tax payments,
and he asks
him 'to send men with him to
collect what is owing to him.'
These
men may of course have been
the local officials, but it
seems
likelier that they were soldiers
or armed
guards.
The
employment of soldiers for this purpose
is
certainly
not a healthy sign. A populace
which refuses payment
of taxes except
under threat
of armed force is either
very intractable (an accusation
which can hardly be brought
against the Egyptians in normal
circumstances) or economically
distressed. That the state
of Egypt gave cause
for uneasiness even as
early as the
later years of Tiberius is
shown by the edict of the prefect
Flaccus* forbidding the bearing
of arms under
pain of death. In the
main, however,
it was not so much active
opposition
that the government had to
fear as that passive
resistance
which took
the form of flight (αυαχωρησις).
This was of course endemic
in
Egypt, in all epochs the
last resort of the peasant
when his
position
became intolerable; but there
is an unusual number of instances
from this
period.
From as early
as A.D. 19-20
we have examples
of returns from Oxyrhynchus,* constructed according to
a regular formula, testifying
to the flight
of tax-payers. Philo's statement
will be remembered, that
whole
villages became depopulated
in this way. That
this statement is no
mere rhetorical exaggeration
is
shown by actual documents.
Thus, in one papyrus the
collectors of poll-tax of
six villages in
the Arsinoite
nome report,
some time
between
A.D. 55 and
60 : 'The population in the
foregoing villages, once
numerous,
has now shrunk to a few persons,
because
some have fled, having no
means, and some have died
without
leaving relatives.'* This statement in turn
finds
confirmation in even less
questionable evidence.
P. Cornell 24,
dated
in A.D. 56,
is a list, drawn up by the
tax-collector of Philadelphia,
of
no less than 44 αποροι ανευρετοι
(that is, destitute persons
who had disappeared),
who in the
month of
Epeiph of the second year of Nero were in
arrear with
their
poll and
dyke-taxes for the
first year.
It
is in connexion with this document
that I
am enabled
to produce a
new piece of
evidence. Mr.
C. H. Roberts
informed me that
there was in the John Rylands
Library
a similar
and longer
list;* and Mr.
E. G. Turner had the
great kindness, on
two recent visits
to Manchester,
to
copy for me a large
part of this document;
a third
visit has produced
a revised text. It
was drawn up in the
year
57 by Nemesion,
collector of poll-tax
for Philadelphia.* Like Cornell 24 this
document is a list
of defaulting tax-payers,
in this
case for the month
of
Neos Sebastos
(Hathyr) of the fourth year of Nero.
The taxes are
poll-tax, total
deficit 4728 drachmas,
3 obols; pig-tax,
total 121
drachmas, 1
obol; dyke-tax,
total 1100
drachmas (I may here interject that it
is apparently impossible
to make these
totals square exactly
with
the single
items.)
The
document begins with a list
of 43
persons described
as αναχεχορηχοτες απορι ευ απο του (προτου) ετους.* Now of these
43 persons 29
are certainly,
two or
three others are
doubtfully, identical
with persons
who appear in the
list of 44 given
in
Cornell 24. Some
of the names not
paralleled in the
latter
may be the corrected
names
of persons
there
mentioned;
or possibly, while certain persons
noted as
missing in the
first year had returned
to their
homes,
others
had fled. 'At
all events, the
deficit of 44 tax-payers
recorded for the first year of Nero
was substantially maintained
in the fourth
year, 43 being still in hiding.
After
this list comes, however, a second
headed 'others who have fled, from
Pauni of the aforementioned
year,
to unknown
localities.' This contains
54 names. This is followed by a third
list, the heading of which neither
Mr. Turner nor Mr. Roberts has yet
succeeded in reading, containing
seven names. The total is stated
as 105,
which should properly
be 104. In col. vii are four persons
returned as having died in the month
of Sebastos of the second
year,
whose taxes were still unpaid, and
then comes another list of defaulters
who fled in the first year, perhaps
in Pauni; the heading is at present
not very
certainly read, but perhaps means
that they still owed the pig tax
and dyke-tax
but had paid poll-tax,
and that 'afterwards they were released
(from their obligations)
by the royal scribe.' These number
47.*
This
account proves conclusively the substantial truth of
the statements
made by the tax-collectors of P. Graux 2 and by Philo.
No doubt the evidence
is fortuitous
and
fragmentary,
and there
are other
documents
of the
period which give no indication
of an economic crisis and might
even,
in themselves,
be
taken
as testifying
to a
fair
degree
of prosperity.
Nevertheless
the combined
effect of Alexander's edict,
directed primarily to Alexandria
but containing
evidence on
the state of
Egypt as a whole,
of Lusius
Geta's edict revealing
attempts to infringe the immunity
enjoyed by the priests of
Socnopaeus, of the
documents from the Fayum, and
of the Oxyrhynchus
papyri to which I have referred
is, I submit, to
indicate
unmistakably
that
the general
condition
was at this
time grave; that the financial
officials were experiencing
great difficulty
in raising the tax-quota and
were, in consequence,
resorting to most questionable
practices; and that
the
edict of
Tiberius Julius Alexander,
whatever allowance be made
for
propagandist and rhetorical
exaggeration, must be treated as a serious
historical document.*
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