The funds which came into the imperial treasury from the different
sources mentioned above were spent mainly on the government of the
provinces, on roads, bridges, and other public works, on religion, on
the army and navy, and on the city of Rome. It is impossible to find
out the size of these different items. It has been calculated that in
the early part of the first century the army cost 160,000,000 sesterces
a year, a sum which, with some hesitation, one may roughly estimate
had the purchasing value of $8,000,000. An imperial procurator in one
of the provinces received an annual salary which ranged from $3,000
to $15,000. The expense of provincial government was tremendously
increased from the second century on by the development of an
elaborate bureaucratic system. The outgo for the city of Rome included
expenditures for the construction and maintenance of public works, for
religious purposes, and to provide food and amusement for the populace.
We notice the absence from the list of charges of certain items like
appropriations for education and charity which form an important part
of a modern budget.
Under the republic the control of finances rested mainly with the
senate; under the empire it was divided between the emperor and the
senate. The republican system of financial administration would
seem to us very loose, and surprising in the case of so practical a
people as the Romans. Under it the senate appropriated money for a
period of five years to be used by the censors in the construction of
public works, and lump sums were voted for expenditure by the other
civil magistrates, and itemized accounts were not required of them.
As happened in so many other matters, with the empire a better system
of financial administration came in. The government collected most
of the taxes through its own agents. The supervision of receipts and
expenditures was more thorough, and we hear of something approaching
an itemized budget. The lion’s share of the revenues went into the
imperial fiscus. The funds at the emperor’s disposal were also
materially augmented by the development of crown property and of the
emperor’s private fortune. Many large private estates were confiscated
by the emperor, and many legacies were left to him. Indeed it was often
a hazardous thing for a rich man to pass over the emperor in his will.
The hereditary principle of succession was never formally recognized in
the Roman constitution, but it was practically followed from Augustus
to Nero, so that the interesting distinction which we make today
between crown property and the patrimony of the emperor was not adopted
before the year 69.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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