Page:Roman public life (IA romanpubliclife00greeiala).pdf/344

 Cicero's time it was only the Asiatic provinces, where taxes were imposed on quite a different system, that yielded a surplus. It was this system, which the Romans found existing in Sicily, Sardinia, and Asia, and with their characteristic negligence elected to preserve, which changed the whole theory of Roman taxation. The principle was that of the payment by the cultivator (arator) of a tithe (decuma) of the produce of his land. It was inevitable that the Roman lawyer should associate this due with the vectigal paid by the occupants of ager publicus, and should evolve from the comparison the strange theory that land in the provinces was not owned but merely "possessed" by its holders. The chief practical consequences of the tithe system were a surplus to the treasury, and the exactions of the middlemen (publicani) through the indirect system of collection which it involved.

The direct tax (stipendium) was collected by a tribute assessed either on the land (tributum soli) or on the personalty of individuals (tributum capitis). The Romans of the Republic seem never to have attempted to form an accurate estimate of the resources furnished by the land and personal wealth of a province; doubtless in Hellenised districts they employed the systems which they found existing, such as the schedules which formed the bases of the [Greek: eisphorai]: in Spain amongst other rough expedients they seem to have adopted a valuation tax on a proportion of the produce of the soil; while elsewhere, as in Macedonia, they fixed a total on the existing basis of collection.of Cilicia (Cic. ad Fam. iii. 8, 5; ad Att. v. 16, 2) probably refer to local taxes improperly sold to publicani.]