Vandal Fiscal Organization

The archaeology of fifth - and sixth-century North Africa reveals the economic foundations of the Vandal kingdom, but can offer little indication of the actions of the Hasding kings themselves. In general, however, the continuities and changes in agricultural practice and manufacturing suggest that the occupation of Carthage forced a redefinition of Africa’s position in the wider world, but that the settlement of the Vandals had little discernible effect upon the exploitation of its rich lands. To ascribe an economic agency to the Vandals - to see how Geiseric and his successors helped or hindered the prosperity of their region - we need instead to investigate the fiscal and monetary policies of their new government.

The financial structures of the Vandal kingdom are most visible to us in the legacy that they left. In 534, shortly after the Byzantine occupation of Africa, Justinian sent two officials named Tryphon and Eustratius to take a census of the new imperial provinces for tax purposes.67 Procopius suggests that this undertaking was unpopular among local landowners, who were hardly anxious to pay new taxes, but necessary because the old census records had been destroyed by Geiseric at the time of the Vandal occupation. Much of the Byzantine legislation of the same period is concerned with the disentangling of the confused financial systems that had evolved since ad 439. The fifth century had not been a period in which Romano-Africans were spared from the attention of the taxman - ample literary evidence testifies to his continued activity under the Hasdings - but changed political circumstances had led to a much changed fiscal organization. It was that which caused the Byzantines such problems.

The basic principles behind this transformation are clear enough, even if the available evidence is not always as full as might be hoped. As we have seen, the Vandals inherited a rich province, which continued to flourish, and which remained geared towards the generation of tax revenue. What the Hasdings were spared, however, were many of the overheads of the later Roman state.68 While public expenditure under the empire was minute in comparison to that of modern states, its fiscal commitments were still sizeable, and far greater than those of the early medieval kingdoms. The vast revenues committed to the imperial army in the fourth and early fifth century - estimated at around 50 per cent of fiscal expenditure - were slashed under the Hasdings, supported as they were by an army which gained its sustenance from the revenues of the land, rather than from salaries, and which could supplement this with the rich plunder they obtained on campaign and on raids.69 The Vandal fisc still had to pay for the civil bureaucracy of the new state and two passing references in the historical literature demonstrate that the official government post or cursus publicus remained a drain on the treasury.70 But in each case, the commitments of the Hasding monarchy can only have been a fraction of those of the later Roman state. In short, Vandal administration was probably a rather reduced version of that which had come before, with a concomitant reduction in cost.71 Africa had always been one of the wealthiest provinces of the Roman world. With easy access to a more or less constant source of taxable wealth, but with few immediate financial commitments, the Vandals could not dispense with taxation entirely, yet they did not necessarily have to collect it with the same diligence as the later Roman (or, indeed, Byzantine) administrators.

Taxation and vandal fiscal policy

The Vandal kingdom, like the late empire, recognized a formal separation between the rent and profits from royal lands (res privata) and the state wealth generated primarily from taxation, which was the responsibility of the state treasury or fiscus. The former had an ideological as well as economic significance. It was through these landholdings that the Hasdings asserted their status amid a military aristocracy which increasingly enjoyed some economic autonomy. The royal possessions were diverse and impressive, and included mines and forests as well as agricultural land in Zeugitana and Byzacena. The res privata may also have been supplemented intermittently by the proceeds accruing from Geiseric’s vigorous foreign policy; it is certainly likely, for example, that much of the wealth taken from Rome in 455 ended up in the king’s private coffers, rather than in the state treasury.

The fiscus was central to the economy of the kingdom. Fiscal revenue was primarily drawn, as it always had been, from taxation on the land. During the later Roman period, responsibility for the assessment and collection of this taxation trickled down the bureaucratic hierarchy to pool at the feet of the curiales - the civic aristocracy. Since these curiales were afforded little financial responsibility after the Byzantine occupation, it has been suggested that effective municipal taxation came to an end during the Vandal period.72 If this was the case, it took some time to die. Fulgentius of Ruspe, for example, held the curial rank of procurator in his early life.73 While his precise duties are not outlined in the Vita Fulgentii, the fact that his biographer draws extensive parallels between Fulgentius’ secular duties and those of Matthew the tax-collector in the New Testament probably tells its own story. Later in his life, moreover, Fulgentius was to encounter an exactor in Ruspe who used his political influence (and doubtless financial clout), in supporting his preferred candidate for the episcopate of the city.74

The detailed mechanics of Vandal taxation are rather less clear, but it is certain that landholdings continued to be taxed. Procopius tells us that the appropriated lands of the sortes Vandalorum were exempt from taxation in perpetuity, and this seems plausible.75 But those estates which remained in the hands of their original owners did continue to be taxed: in other words the overwhelming majority of agricultural land within the kingdom, and a substantial proportion even in Zeugitana remained subject to assessment. Procopius insists that Romano-African landholdings were taxed particularly heavily in this period, but given the political circumstances in which he was writing, this seems unlikely.76 More luridly, Victor alludes to the taxes and trickery of Huneric towards the beginning of his reign, and suggests that his calumny had become proverbial in Africa at that time.77 Victor’s accounts of Huneric’s actions always pose difficulties of interpretation, but the accusation is unlikely to have been groundless.

Protests about taxation continued to the very end of the Vandal period. The poet Luxorius included two particularly caustic verses on the subject of one ‘Eutychus’, a royal minister who is depicted unlawfully seizing property with the mantra "regis habenda’: ‘All belongs to the king!’.78 Several scholars have pointed out that Luxorius’ Eutychus may be identical to a royal minister under Gelimer by the name of Bonifatius. While both names are common enough in Late Antique Africa, Eutychus is a Greek rendering of the Latin Bonifatius - a linguistic ploy which Luxorius may have adopted for reasons of discretion, or simply to advertise his facility with Greek.79 The chronicler Victor of Tunnuna states that Bonifatius acted as Gelimer’s agent in the confiscation of property, perhaps in response to the military crises in Sardinia and Tripolis, or simply in an attempt to line his pockets after his recent usurpation.80 Procopius’ account is at once more intriguing and more dubious: he states that Bonifatius was given responsibility for the royal treasury at the time of the Byzantine occupation, and was charged with transporting it to Spain in the hope of buying Gelimer a bolt-hole in the kingdom of the Visigoth Theudis.81 Frustrated by a series of contrary winds, Bonifatius was eventually forced to hand over the treasure to Belisarius, who was suitably impressed by both his diligence and the spectacular treasure under his charge.

Other references to taxation within the Vandal kingdom are rare, but reward patient research. The Latin Anthology, for example, contains two anonymous epigrams, on the subject of a man with genitals so prodigiously swollen as to resemble an amphora in size and finish:

You sport a flask hanging down from your groin [. . .], which turns into a

Swollen amphora when the wind blows. You could have paid potters’ tax

To the fiscus, since you excel their product with such a smooth swelling!82

The humour of this epigram depends in part upon the fact that fiscus (literally ‘bag’) can mean both ‘tax office’ and ‘scrotum’.83 This aside, the epigram remains the only extant reference to the potter’s tax (vectigal figulorum) within Vandal Africa, although it was apparently a common duty in the late empire.84 It is reasonable to assume that similar taxes were levied on metal-working, dyeing or fish processing, just as they had been in the later Roman period.85 If the Hasdings continued to tax potters, there is no reason to assume that other craftsmen were spared.

Other forms of income also made their way into the Vandal coffers. The Mediterranean islands paid tribute to Carthage, presumably annually. It was Gelimer’s concern to secure the payment of the Sardinian tribute that led him to send Godas to the island as governor, and then forced the expedition of Stotzas following Godas’ own revolt. The treaty with Odoacer in ad 476 indicates that Geiseric had drawn a tribute from Sicily before ceding control of the island (and its annual duty) to the rulers of Italy.86 No evidence exists from either Corsica or the Balearics, but it is reasonable to assume that a similar arrangement would have been in place in these islands.

Fines and extraordinary taxation also provided a source of revenue for the crown. Inevitably, religious fines are the best documented of these levies, but even here the mechanics of collection are not always clear. In the midst of Huneric’s edict of persecution is a confusing passage regarding the fines which might be levied on the procuratores and conductores of royal estates if they remained intractable in their own Catholicism, or harboured others who refused to convert to Arianism:

This was the punishment for leaseholders on the royal estates: by way of punishment, they would be forced to render to the fiscus as much as they paid to the royal household [domus regiae]. This, we determine, is to be observed in the case of all leaseholders and proprietors of land who believe that they should persist in the same superstition.87

Mutatis mutandis, this is a more or less direct borrowing from an edict of Honorius and Theodosius made to the proconsul of Africa in June 414 for the suppression of the Donatist sect.88 As such, the law may reflect little more than Huneric’s peculiar veneration of late imperial legalese. But if the law was intended to be implemented, its choice of language remains interesting. The implication is that a clear distinction existed between the domus regiae, which collected land rents, and the fiscus, which received fines.89 Victor states elsewhere that it was the fiscus which confiscated the property of Catholic bishops upon their death, and which levied an inheritance tax of 500 solidi on the successor to the diocese.90

Little can be stated with confidence about Vandal taxation, but the fragmentary evidence we do have suggests that taxes and fines continued to be collected down to the Byzantine conquest. The traditional distinction between the res privata (or domus regiae) and the fiscus seems to have been maintained at least down to the reign of Huneric, but may well have disappeared over the following half century. Belisarius and his financial advisors certainly stumbled upon a confused situation when they tried to put their African house in order, but this was not simply because the Vandals had refused to tax. They had benefited from the wealth of North Africa, but did so in their own - typically idiosyncratic - way.

Payment of the military

The reduced expenditure of the Vandal state was a tremendous boon to the Hasding kings. Of central importance here was the army. The military commitments of the new kingdom were substantially less than those of the western empire had been; the Hasdings faced few direct challenges to their rule from usurpers and the shifting frontier with the Moorish polities to the south did not demand substantial military investment until the middle Vandal period at the earliest. But the most significant change was the shift from an army that was primarily paid by salary (which placed the responsibility for their upkeep onto the fisc), to one which was supported on the land. This change was not absolute - the late Roman state had experimented with similar approaches for some time, and elements of the Vandal army continued to be paid by the fisc - but the shift in emphasis was crucial.91

Virtually all commentators are agreed that the payment of the Vandal military came - directly or indirectly - from the sortes Vandalorum. If the settlement of 442 involved the distribution of actual land to Vandals and their families (as seems likely), this effectively represented a fundamental re-organization of the military system.92 No longer directly dependent upon the state for support, members of the military aristocracy enjoyed some degree of financial (and hence also political) autonomy. Geiseric’s attempts to control the problems this presented have already been outlined, but the economic benefits of a primarily landed army deserve some consideration. Where the later Roman state expended a substantial proportion of its revenue upon the army, the Hasding system had no such burden to carry. The army may also have been largely selffinancing, particularly during Geiseric’s reign. While it is possible to over-estimate the financial damage caused by Vandal raiding through the Mediterranean between 439-442 and 445-476, there can be little doubt that the plunder taken on these raids did much to ensure the continued satisfaction and loyalty of the Vandal nobility without the need for substantial additional outlay on the part of the Hasdings. As far as we can tell, the muscle-bound marines of Carthage never mutinied for food and pay.

The practicalities of campaigning overseas and maintaining the peace at home did entail some modest financial commitment on the part of the state. Procopius’ confusing allusions to the Moorish units stationed in Sardinia suggest that there may have been an attempt to settle them on the island, and hence to instigate there the military system that existed in North Africa.93 The survival of coins bearing the monogram of the pre-sidia Maurorum Sardiniae (‘garrison of the Moors of Sardinia’) may reflect the donatives that were given to the occupying forces. Faint echoes of the same institution are found in an anonymous poem of the Latin Anthology on an immoral army officer; the poem notes that both the fiscus and the lot of the ordinary soldier are impoverished by the steady misappropriation of military provisions (populi pastus).94

Fulgentius also refers in passing to cash donatives to Vandal troops on garrison duty.95 It seems likely that units stationed in towns were paid directly from the fiscus, rather than from their own landholdings, or the estates of their superior officers. One frequently cited example derives from the city of Tipasa, in Mauretania Caesariensis. This town lay far beyond the sortes Vandalorum proper, but was of some strategic importance, and evidently housed at least a nominal Vandal presence, to judge from Victor’s accounts of persecution there, and from the coins found in two Vandal-period hoards from the Villa of the Frescoes in the city.96 Although the majority were minted locally, and only one named Vandal coin was included among the finds - a nummus of King Thrasamund - a number of anonymous bronzes have cautiously been identified as Carthaginian issues of the Vandal period.97 This in itself is significant: low-denomination Vandal coins were primarily minted for use in Carthage and its immediate hinterland - at least this is where most known examples have been found.98 While the handful of Vandal bronzes from Tipasa may simply be a chance survival, the implications of this for the circulation of money in Vandal Africa are significant; military payment may then have been a stimulus for the circulation of money - at least in the African regions beyond Zeugitana.