The empire interfered most obviously and regularly in provincial life through mechanisms designed to facilitate the extraction of revenue. The Roman government imposed a bewildering array of direct and indirect taxes in cash and kind, some of which were temporary or specific to particular provinces or both. Here we can do no more than sketch the most regular features of the system (A. H. M. Jones 1974: 15185; B. D. Shaw 1988; Brunt 1990: 324-46; 531-40; Rathbone 1996; and Eck 2000).
The principal incidence ofRoman taxation fell on individuals and their property. Its primary ideological justification was support of the army: hence Roman citizens were, supposedly, first subjected to taxation in order to pay the wages of soldiers fighting Rome’s first sustained military campaign (Livy 4.59.11-60.8) and income from booty occasionally led to refunds (Livy 39.7.5). Roman citizens were exempted from direct taxation after the Third Macedonian War; that only provincials paid thereafter was not a punishment: they paid for pacem sempiternam... atque otium, ‘‘eternal peace and leisure’’ (Cic. Q. fr. 1.1.34; cf. Ando 2000: 175-90).
In light of this emphasis on militarism and its costs, it is salutary to recall that most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture - public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art - were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and political privileges (Veyne 1976; Duncan-Jones 1982: 63-119; 1990: 174-84; Lendon 1997).
World History
